Classifier Subset Selection to construct multi-classifiers by means of estimation of distribution algorithms

This paper proposes a novel approach to select the individual classifiers to take part in a Multiple-Classifier System. Individual classifier selection is a key step in the development of multi-classifiers. Several works have shown the benefits of fusing complementary classifiers. Nevertheless, the selection of the base classifiers to be used is still an open question, and different approaches have been proposed in the literature. This work is based on the selection of the appropriate single classifiers by means of an evolutionary algorithm. Different base classifiers, which have been chosen from different classifier families, are used as candidates in order to obtain variability in the classifications given. Experimental results carried out with 20 databases from the UCI Repository show how adequate the proposed approach is; Stacked Generalization multi-classifier has been selected to perform the experimental comparisons.The work described in this paper was partially conducted within the Basque Government Research Team grant and the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU and under grant UFI11/45 (BAILab)

Multi-Classifier System Configuration using Genetic Algorithms

Classifier combination is a powerful paradigm to deal with difficult pattern classification problems. As matter of this fact, multi-classifier systems have been widely adopted in many applications for which very high classification performance is necessary. Notwithstanding, multi-classifier system design is still an open problem. In fact, complexity of multi-classifiers systems make the theoretical evaluation of system performance very difficult and, consequently, also the design of a multi-classifier system. This paper presents a new approach for the design of a multi-classifier system. In particular, the problem of feature selection for a multiclassifier system is addressed and a genetic algorithm is proposed for automatic selecting the optimal set of features for each individual classifier of the multi-classifier system. The experimental results, carried out in the field of handwritten digit recognition, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach