'Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)'
Doi
Abstract
Visual exploration of scientific data in life science
area is a growing research field due to the large amount of
available data. The Kohonen’s Self Organizing Map (SOM) is
a widely used tool for visualization of multidimensional data.
In this paper we present a fast learning algorithm for SOMs
that uses a simulated annealing method to adapt the learning
parameters. The algorithm has been adopted in a data analysis
framework for the generation of similarity maps. Such maps
provide an effective tool for the visual exploration of large and
multi-dimensional input spaces. The approach has been applied
to data generated during the High Throughput Screening
of molecular compounds; the generated maps allow a visual
exploration of molecules with similar topological properties.
The experimental analysis on real world data from the
National Cancer Institute shows the speed up of the proposed
SOM training process in comparison to a traditional approach.
The resulting visual landscape groups molecules with similar
chemical properties in densely connected regions