Improving the quality of Persian clinical text with a novel spelling correction system

Background: The accuracy of spelling in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is a critical factor for efficient clinical care, research, and ensuring patient safety. The Persian language, with its abundant vocabulary and complex characteristics, poses unique challenges for real-word error correction. This research aimed to develop an innovative approach for detecting and correcting spelling errors in Persian clinical text. Methods: Our strategy employs a state-of-the-art pre-trained model that has been meticulously fine-tuned specifically for the task of spelling correction in the Persian clinical domain. This model is complemented by an innovative orthographic similarity matching algorithm, PERTO, which uses visual similarity of characters for ranking correction candidates. Results: The evaluation of our approach demonstrated its robustness and precision in detecting and rectifying word errors in Persian clinical text. In terms of non-word error correction, our model achieved an F1-Score of 90.0% when the PERTO algorithm was employed. For real-word error detection, our model demonstrated its highest performance, achieving an F1-Score of 90.6%. Furthermore, the model reached its highest F1-Score of 91.5% for real-word error correction when the PERTO algorithm was employed. Conclusions: Despite certain limitations, our method represents a substantial advancement in the field of spelling error detection and correction for Persian clinical text. By effectively addressing the unique challenges posed by the Persian language, our approach paves the way for more accurate and efficient clinical documentation, contributing to improved patient care and safety. Future research could explore its use in other areas of the Persian medical domain, enhancing its impact and utility.

Automatic Real-word Error Correction in Persian Text

Automatic spelling correction stands as a pivotal challenge within the ambit of natural language processing (NLP), demanding nuanced solutions. Traditional spelling correction techniques are typically only capable of detecting and correcting non-word errors, such as typos and misspellings. However, context-sensitive errors, also known as real-word errors, are more challenging to detect because they are valid words that are used incorrectly in a given context. The Persian language, characterized by its rich morphology and complex syntax, presents formidable challenges to automatic spelling correction systems. Furthermore, the limited availability of Persian language resources makes it difficult to train effective spelling correction models. This paper introduces a cutting-edge approach for precise and efficient real-word error correction in Persian text. Our methodology adopts a structured, multi-tiered approach, employing semantic analysis, feature selection, and advanced classifiers to enhance error detection and correction efficacy. The innovative architecture discovers and stores semantic similarities between words and phrases in Persian text. The classifiers accurately identify real-word errors, while the semantic ranking algorithm determines the most probable corrections for real-word errors, taking into account specific spelling correction and context properties such as context, semantic similarity, and edit-distance measures. Evaluations have demonstrated that our proposed method surpasses previous Persian real-word error correction models. Our method achieves an impressive F-measure of 96.6% in the detection phase and an accuracy of 99.1% in the correction phase. These results clearly indicate that our approach is a highly promising solution for automatic real-word error correction in Persian text.

PERCORE: A Deep Learning-Based Framework for Persian Spelling Correction with Phonetic Analysis

This research introduces a state-of-the-art Persian spelling correction system that seamlessly integrates deep learning techniques with phonetic analysis, significantly enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of natural language processing (NLP) for Persian. Utilizing a fine-tuned language representation model, our methodology effectively combines deep contextual analysis with phonetic insights, adeptly correcting both non-word and real-word spelling errors. This strategy proves particularly effective in tackling the unique complexities of Persian spelling, including its elaborate morphology and the challenge of homophony. A thorough evaluation on a wide-ranging dataset confirms our system's superior performance compared to existing methods, with impressive F1-Scores of 0.890 for detecting real-word errors and 0.905 for correcting them. Additionally, the system demonstrates a strong capability in non-word error correction, achieving an F1-Score of 0.891. These results illustrate the significant benefits of incorporating phonetic insights into deep learning models for spelling correction. Our contributions not only advance Persian language processing by providing a versatile solution for a variety of NLP applications but also pave the way for future research in the field, emphasizing the critical role of phonetic analysis in developing effective spelling correction system.

An Expert System to Diagnose Spinal Disorders

Objective: Until now, traditional invasive approaches have been the only means being leveraged to diagnose spinal disorders. Traditional manual diagnostics require a high workload, and diagnostic errors are likely to occur due to the prolonged work of physicians. In this research, we develop an expert system based on a hybrid inference algorithm and comprehensive integrated knowledge for assisting the experts in the fast and high-quality diagnosis of spinal disorders. Methods: First, for each spinal anomaly, the accurate and integrated knowledge was acquired from related experts and resources. Second, based on probability distributions and dependencies between symptoms of each anomaly, a unique numerical value known as certainty effect value was assigned to each symptom. Third, a new hybrid inference algorithm was designed to obtain excellent performance, which was an incorporation of the Backward Chaining Inference and Theory of Uncertainty. Results: The proposed expert system was evaluated in two different phases, real-world samples, and medical records evaluation. Evaluations show that in terms of real-world samples analysis, the system achieved excellent accuracy. Application of the system on the sample with anomalies revealed the degree of severity of disorders and the risk of development of abnormalities in unhealthy and healthy patients. In the case of medical records analysis, our expert system proved to have promising performance, which was very close to those of experts. Conclusion: Evaluations suggest that the proposed expert system provides promising performance, helping specialists to validate the accuracy and integrity of their diagnosis. It can also serve as an intelligent educational software for medical students to gain familiarity with spinal disorder diagnosis process, and related symptoms.