A Combination of Cutset Conditioning with Clique-Tree Propagation in the Pathfinder System

03/27/2013

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by   Jaap Suermondt, et al.

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Cutset conditioning and clique-tree propagation are two popular methods for performing exact probabilistic inference in Bayesian belief networks. Cutset conditioning is based on decomposition of a subset of network nodes, whereas clique-tree propagation depends on aggregation of nodes. We describe a means to combine cutset conditioning and clique- tree propagation in an approach called aggregation after decomposition (AD). We discuss the application of the AD method in the Pathfinder system, a medical expert system that offers assistance with diagnosis in hematopathology.