Computers in Biology and Medicine 35 (2005) 421–433 http://www.intl.elsevierhealth.com/journals/cobm Automatic detection of erythemato-squamous diseases using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems Elif Derya  Ubeyl˙ , ˙ Inan G uler * Department of Electronics and Computer Education, Faculty of Technical Education, Gazi University, 06500 Teknikokullar, Ankara, Turkey Received 4 August 2003; accepted 16 March 2004 Abstract A new approach based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was presented for detection of erythemato-squamous diseases. The domain contained records of patients with known diagnosis. Given a training set of such records, the ANFIS classiers learned how to dierentiate a new case in the domain. The six ANFIS classiers were used to detect the six erythemato-squamous diseases when 34 features dening six disease indications were used as inputs. To improve diagnostic accuracy, the seventh ANFIS classier (combining ANFIS) was trained using the outputs of the six ANFIS classiers as input data. The proposed ANFIS model combined the neural network adaptive capabilities and the fuzzy logic qualitative approach. Some conclusions concerning the impacts of features on the detection of erythemato-squamous diseases were obtained through analysis of the ANFIS. The performances of the ANFIS model were evaluated in terms of training performances and classication accuracies and the results conrmed that the proposed ANFIS model has some potential in detecting the erythemato-squamous diseases. The ANFIS model achieved accuracy rates which were higher than that of the stand-alone neural network model. ? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS); Fuzzy logic; Erythemato-squamous diseases detection 1. Introduction The dierential diagnosis of erythemato-squamous diseases is a dicult problem in dermatology. The diseases in this group are psoriasis, seboreic dermatitis, lichen planus, pityriasis rosea, chronic dermatitis and pityriasis rubra pilaris. They all share the clinical features of erythema and scaling * Corresponding author. Tel.: +90-312-212-3976; fax: +90-312-212-0059. E-mail address: iguler@gazi.edu.tr ( ˙ I.G uler). 0010-4825/$-see front matter ? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2004.03.003