Pairwise classifier combination using belief functions

In the so-called pairwise approach to polychotomous classification, a multiclass problem is solved by combining classifiers trained to discriminate between each pair of classes. In this paper, this approach is revisited in the framework of the Dempster–Shafer theory of belief functions, a non-probabilistic framework for quantifying and manipulating partial knowledge. It is proposed to interpret the output of each pairwise classifiers by a conditional belief function. The problem of classifier combination then amounts to computing the non-conditional belief function which is the most consistent, according to some criterion, with the conditional belief functions provided by the classifiers. Experiments with various datasets demonstrate the good performances of this method as compared to previous approaches to the same problem.