A genetically optimized neural network model for multi-class classification

• An enhanced Genetically Optimized Neural Network (GONN) is proposed for Multi-class data classification.
• Multi-tree GONN classifier is used to classify multi-class data.
• Enhanced GONN produces the highest classification accuracy among other classifiers in less time.

Multi-class classification is one of the major challenges in real world application. Classification algorithms are generally binary in nature and must be extended for multi-class problems. Therefore, in this paper, we proposed an enhanced Genetically Optimized Neural Network (GONN) algorithm, for solving multi-class classification problems. We used a multi-tree GONN representation which integrates multiple GONN trees; each individual is a single GONN classifier. Thus enhanced classifier is an integrated version of individual GONN classifiers for all classes. The integrated version of classifiers is evolved genetically to optimize its architecture for multi-class classification. To demonstrate our results, we had taken seven datasets from UCI Machine Learning repository and compared the classification accuracy and training time of enhanced GONN with classical Koza’s model and classical Back propagation model. Our algorithm gives better classification accuracy of almost 5% and 8% than Koza’s model and Back propagation model respectively even for complex and real multi-class data in lesser amount of time. This enhanced GONN algorithm produces better results than popular classification algorithms like Genetic Algorithm, Support Vector Machine and Neural Network which makes it a good alternative to the well-known machine learning methods for solving multi-class classification problems. Even for datasets containing noise and complex features, the results produced by enhanced GONN is much better than other machine learning algorithms. The proposed enhanced GONN can be applied to expert and intelligent systems for effectively classifying large, complex and noisy real time multi-class data.