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SummaryKnowledge acquisition for expert systems typically is a tedious, iterative process involving long hours of consultation between the domain experts and the computer scientists who serve as knowledge engineers. For well-understood domains, however, it may be possible to facilitate the knowledge acquisition process by allowing domain experts to develop and edit a knowledge base directly. Administration of protocol-directed cancer chemotherapy is such a well-understood application area, and a knowledge acquisition system, called OPAL, has been developed for eliciting chemotherapy-protocol knowledge directly from expert oncologists. OPAL’s knowledge acquisition approach is based on the interactive graphics environment available on current generation workstations. The use of graphics improves the interface by reducing typing, avoiding natural language interpretations, and allowing flexibility in entry sequence. The knowledge in OPAL is displayed using an arrangement of hierarchically related, graphical forms. The position of a particular form in the hierarchy defines the context of the knowledge contained in the form. Intelligent editing programs such as OPAL can streamline the knowledge engineering process for highly structured domains requiring repetitive knowledge entry.

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