Medical diagnostic theory applied to food technology

Abstract

Diagnostic systems are all around us. They are used in military science to detect threats of enemies, in meteorology to predict weather conditions, in civil engineering to reveal malfunctions in buildings and factories, and in medicine to detect diseases in people.<br>Other diagnostic systems are used to make rational selections from many objects; psychologists use selection algorithms to classify job or school applicants according to the likelihood of success, governments to evaluate fraudulent tax declarations, and policemen to detect criminal suspects.<br>In medicine, diagnosis is a mail challenge. Diagnostic tests are used to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy subjects, and are of daily use because patients are central in clinical practice (Harrison's Principles, 2011). The methodology to evaluate the accuracy and characteristitcs of diagnostic tests is well established in the medical field (Sacket et al., 1985).