Genetic and Evolutionary Computation : Medical Applications

Genetic and Evolutionary Computation: Medical Applications provides an overview of the range of GEC techniques being applied to medicine and healthcare in a context that is relevant not only for existing GEC practitioners but also those from other disciplines, particularly health professionals. There is rapidly increasing interest in applying evolutionary computation to problems in medicine, but to date no text that introduces evolutionary computation in a medical context. By explaining the basic introductory theory, typical application areas and detailed implementation in one coherent volume, this book will appeal to a wide audience from software developers to medical scientists.

Centred around a set of nine case studies on the application of GEC to different areas of medicine, the book offers an overview of applications of GEC to medicine, describes applications in which GEC is used to analyse medical images and data sets, derive advanced models, and suggest diagnoses and treatments, finally providing hints about possible future advancements of genetic and evolutionary computation in medicine.

• Explores the rapidly growing area of genetic and evolutionary computation in context of its viable and exciting payoffs in the field of medical applications.
• Explains the underlying theory, typical applications and detailed implementation.
• Includes general sections about the applications of GEC to medicine and their expected future developments, as well as specific sections on applications of GEC to medical imaging, analysis of medical data sets, advanced modelling, diagnosis and treatment.
• Features a wide range of tables, illustrations diagrams and photographs.

Stephen Smith, Department of Electronics, University of York, UK
Stephen Smith is a senior lecturer within the Department of Electronics at the University of York. His research interests include evolutionary algorithms and assisted clinical diagnosis. He is co-organiser of the annual GECCO (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference), and co-workshop organiser for the Medical Applications of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Workshop. His editorial experience includes current service as subject area editor for the Journal of Systems Architecture and guest editor for a special issue of the BioSystems journal.

Stefano Cagnoni, Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy
Stefano Cagnoni is an associate professor in the department of computer engineering at the University of Parma. His research interests are in the fields of computer vision, robotics, evolutionary computation and neural networks. He is secretary of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence and Co-chairman of EvoIASP, the EvoNet working group on applications of Evolutionary Computation to Image and Signal Processing. He is co-editor of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation for Image Processing and Analysis, soon to publish with Hindawi Press.