A new genetic feature selection with neural network ensemble

A neural network ensemble is a learning paradigm in which a finite collection of neural networks is trained for the same task. Ensembles generally show better classification and generalization performance than a single neural network does. In this paper, a new feature selection method for a neural network ensemble is proposed for pattern classification. The proposed method selects an adequate feature subset for each constituent neural network of the ensemble using a genetic algorithm. Unlike the conventional feature selection method, each neural network is only allowed to have some (not all) of the considered features. The proposed method can therefore be applied to huge-scale feature classification problems. Experiments are performed with four databases to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.