Abstract
This paper proposes binary versions of artificial rabbits optimization (ARO) for feature selection (FS) with medical diagnosis data. ARO is a recent swarm-based optimization algorithm that mimics rabbits’ natural survival tactics and eating habits. It was modeled in an optimization context to tackle optimization problems of continuous search spaces. In this paper, ARO is improved to deal with the binary domain of FS. The improvements include three additions: First, different alternatives of transfer functions were used to convert ARO from continuous to binary; second, the global-best concept was added to the binary ARO to improve the exploitation capability of the proposed algorithm; and finally, Lévy flight and opposition-based learning strategies were injected into the proposed algorithm to enhance its diversity and thus improve the balance between global exploration and local exploitation during all stages of the search process. Six binary variants of ARO were designed across an extensive set of experiments to study the impact of using the proposed amendments on the performance of the proposed ARO algorithm. These variants are: binary ARO with S-shaped transfer function (BAROS), binary ARO with V-shaped transfer function (BAROV), BAROS with the global-best concept (BGAROS), BGAROV with the global-best concept (BGAROV), BGAROS with Lévy flight and opposition-based learning strategies (BGAROSLO), and BGAROV with Lévy flight and opposition-based learning strategies (BGAROVLO). The proposed binary ARO versions were evaluated using 23 medical FS datasets. In addition, the proposed algorithm was applied to detect coronavirus disease using a real COVID-19 dataset. Five performance measures were used: classification accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, fitness value, and the number of selected features. In a nutshell, the proposed binary ARO versions were able to achieve success rates for these performance metrics as follows: 66.7%, 50%, 33.3%, 66.7%, and 83.3%, respectively. In conclusion, the success of the proposed ARO versions was realized due to the suitable design of the parameters of the proposed ARO version, such as transfer functions, global-best concept, Lévy flight, and opposition-based learning strategies. A comprehensive comparative evaluation was studied against ten well-established methods using the same datasets with a high preference for the proposed ARO versions, especially BGAROSLO which can achieve the best accuracy for the majority of the FS datasets. This is proven using Friedman’s statistical test ad-hocked by Holm’s test.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Awadallah, M.A., Braik, M.S., Al-Betar, M.A. et al. An enhanced binary artificial rabbits optimization for feature selection in medical diagnosis. Neural Comput & Applic 35, 20013–20068 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-023-08812-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-023-08812-6