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. 2021 Apr 9;9(4):e24073. doi: 10.2196/24073

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©Raffaello Furlan, Mauro Gatti, Roberto Menè, Dana Shiffer, Chiara Marchiori, Alessandro Giaj Levra, Vincenzo Saturnino, Enrico Brunetta, Franca Dipaola. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 09.04.2021.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Informatics, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://medinform.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

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Schematic overview of the pattern analysis process. Should the diagnostic factor increase the probability of the chosen diagnostic hypothesis, then the positive likelihood of such a relationship is represented by a connecting blue line. If a diagnostic factor is thought to decrease the likelihood of the diagnostic hypothesis, then the connecting line is depicted in red. When the diagnostic factor does not affect the diagnostic hypothesis, no connecting line is drawn. In addition, the student is asked to weigh the relevance of the diagnostic factors in relation to the hypothesized diagnoses. This is automatically translated into a graphic representation with an increase (positive) or decrease (negative) of the thickness of the connecting lines. In the example in the image, the presence of lobar consolidations on the chest x-ray was highly suggestive of pneumonia (positive high). Therefore, the thickness of the connecting line becomes wider. The circumference of the diagnostic hypothesis node was related to the probability that the chosen diagnosis was correct. As the probability of diagnosis increased, the portion of the highlighted circumference increased as well.