TABLE OF CONTENTS Artificial neural network (ANN) is one of the main constituents of the artificial intelligence techniques. Like in many other areas, ANN has made a significant mark in the domain of healthcare applications. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the basics of neural networks, their operation, major architectures that are widely employed for modeling the input-to-output relations, and the commonly used learning algorithms for training the neural network models. Subsequently, we briefly outline some of the major application areas of neural networks for the improvement and well being of human health.
Following the landmark work undertaken by Rumelhart and his colleagues during the 1980s (Rumelhart et al., 1986), artificial neural networks (ANNs) have drawn tremendous interest due to their demonstrated successful applications in many pattern recognition and modeling works, including image processing (Duranton, 1996), engineering tasks (Rafiq et al., 2001), financial modeling (Coakley & Brown, 2000; Fadlalla & Lin, 2001), manufacturing (Hans et al., 2000; Wu, 1992), biomedicine (Nazeran & Behbehani, 2000), and so forth. In recent years, there has been a wide acceptance by the research community in the use of ANN as a tool for solving many biomedical and healthcare problems. Within the healthcare area, significant applications of...
