This volume contains the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, which will be held in Munich, Germany, 3 - 6 October 1993. The conference is organized by AlME, the European Society for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Europe. Previous international conferences were held in Marseille (1987), London (1989), and Maastricht (1991).

AIME was established in 1986 to foster fundamental and applied research in artificial intelligence and in symbolic information processing techniques for medical care and medical research Artificial Intelligence in medicine is a special field of Medical Informatics and deals with the enhancement of medical information systems by knowledge based components and new paradigms.

AIME 93 is hosted by the German National Centre for Environmental and Health Research (GSF) and supported by both the working group on “Expert Systems” of the German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry, and Epidemiology (GMDS) and the national research project on Medical Knowledge Bases MEDWIS. The GSF-MEDIS Institute and the GSF conference service have taken most of the organizational burden on their shoulders.

AIME 93 will show recent scientific results presented in oral contributions, posters and demonstrations. The informatical topics range from “A priori probabilities” to “Validation” and the clinical topics from “Abdomen” to “Ventilation”. The tutorials, which are both methodological and user-oriented, will constitute and important element of the conference.

The present proceedings contain 60 contributions to AlME 93 and cover all presentations which are part of the scientific programme, among the 2 keynotes, 26 oral presentations with an average of 12 pages, 38 poster presentations and demonstrations with an average of 4 pages. The papers were each selected and reviewed by at least two members of the international programme committee. We are very thankful for the trouble they have taken. Their recommendations were sent to the authors and incorporated in the final texts. They also helped us shape the structure of the conference.

The papers are mainly grouped around the two subject areas of “Knowledge acquisition and representation” and “Strategies for medical reasoning” which form the backbone of most of the theoretical work in the field. It was encouraging to see that many papers also describe applications of AI systems in medicine and that many of these have reached a remarkable degree of maturity. AI technology is passing the threshold between research-oriented feasibility studies and recognized clinical applications. AIME 93 will show both the research of understanding the principles of medical knowledge and medical reasoning and the development of methodologies and tools for professional design, realization, and implementation of knowledge-based systems.

Many people - too many to name all of them here - have contributed to the solid preparation of this conference. We wish to thank them all as they have done this job in addition to their usual work, especially Volker Böhm, Lydia Janke, and Wolfgang Moser, whose considerable efforts have paved the way for AIME 93.

Steen Andreassen, Rolf Engelbrecht and Jeremy Wyatt (Editors)

October 1993