Intelligent Neural Network Schemes for Multi-Class Classification

Multi-class classification is a very important technique in engineering applications, e.g., mechanical systems, mechanics and design innovations, applied materials in nanotechnologies, etc. A large amount of research is done for single-label classification where objects are associated with a single category. However, in many application domains, an object can belong to two or more categories, and multi-label classification is needed. Traditionally, statistical methods were used; recently, machine learning techniques, in particular neural networks, have been proposed to solve the multi-class classification problem. In this paper, we develop radial basis function (RBF)-based neural network schemes for single-label and multi-label classification, respectively. The number of hidden nodes and the parameters involved with the basis functions are determined automatically by applying an iterative self-constructing clustering algorithm to the given training dataset, and biases and weights are derived optimally by least squares. Dimensionality reduction techniques are adopted and integrated to help reduce the overfitting problem associated with the RBF networks. Experimental results from benchmark datasets are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.