This seems vaguely NLP-ish.
Health Bytes/Reuters:
quote:Stafstrom asked 226 children to make pencil drawings that showed the location of their pain, what their pain feels like, and any other changes or symptoms that accompany the headache. He then completed the clinical evaluation and diagnosed the headache type without examining the pictures. He diagnosed migraine or mixed headache with a prominent migraine component in 57.5% of the children.
Later, Drs. Kevin Rostasy and Anna Minster, also pediatric neurologists, were asked to use the pictures to decide whether their features were more consistent with migraine or nonmigraine headache. They categorized 139 pictures as migraine-related. Compared to clinical evaluation, analysis of drawings correctly identified migraines 93% of the time.
Drawings that showed pain around the eye socket always indicated migraine, the authors note. Pictures of the child lying down, drawings showing blind spots or other defects in the visual field, depictions of light intolerance and illustrations of gastrointestinal symptoms were all also closely correlated to a diagnosis of migraine.
Seventeen percent of children who drew pictures showing pounding or throbbing pain were diagnosed with nonmigraine headache. Diagnoses were nearly equally divided for those showing dizziness, sadness or crying, or different pain locations, including pain on one side of the head. The appearance of a tight band around the head or of squeezing pain was significantly associated with muscle tension-type headaches.
The children's age did not affect their ability to accurately render their headache type. In fact, those younger than 8 did somewhat better than older children. The youngest patient, a 4-year-old boy, drew rocks pounding his forehead.
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