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This paper proposes a novel approach to automatic recognition of handprinted Bangla (an Indian script) numerals. A modified Topology Adaptive Self-Organizing Neural Network is proposed to extract a vector skeleton from a binary numeral image. Simple heuristics are considered to prune artifacts, if any, in such a skeletal shape. Certain topological and structural features like loops, junctions, positions of terminal nodes, etc. are used along with a hierarchical tree classifier to classify handwritten numerals into smaller subgroups. Multilayer perceptron (MLP) networks are then employed to uniquely classify the numerals belonging to each subgroup. The system is trained using a sample data set of 1800 numerals and we have obtained 93.26% correct recognition rate and 1.71% rejection on a separate test set of another 7760 samples. In addition, a validation set consisting of 1440 samples has been used to determine the termination of the training algorithm of the MLP networks. The proposed scheme is sufficiently robust with respect to considerable object noise.

Brain-Computer Interface is an emerging field that focuses on transforming brain data into machine commands. EEG-based BCI is widely used due to the non-invasive nature of Electroencephalogram. Classification of EEG signals is one of the primary components in BCI applications. Steady-State Visually Evoked Potential (SSVEP) paradigms have gained importance because of lesser training time, higher precision, and improved information transfer rate compared to P300 and motor imagery paradigms. In this paper, a novel hybrid Anchoring-based Particle Swarm Optimized Scaled Conjugate Gradient Multi-Layer Perceptron classifier (APS-MLP) is proposed to improve the classification accuracy of SSVEP five classes viz. 6.66, 7.5, 8.57, 10 and 12 Hz, signals. Scaled Conjugate Gradient descent anchors the initial position of Particle Swarm Optimization. The best position, Pbest, of each particle initializes an SCG-MLP, the accuracy of APS-MLP is obtained by averaging the accuracies of each SCG-MLP. The proposed method is compared with standard classifiers namely, k-NN, SVM, LDA and MLP. In which, the proposed algorithm achieves improved training and testing accuracies of 88.69% and 95.4% respectively, which is 12–15% higher than the standard EEG-based BCI classifiers. The proposed algorithm is robust, with a Cohen’s kappa coefficient of 0.96, and will be used in applications such as motion control and improving the quality of life for people with disabilities.

This paper proposes an intelligent classification technique to identify two categories of MRI volume data as normal and abnormal. The manual interpretation of MRI slices based on visual examination by radiologist/physician may lead to incorrect diagnosis when a large number of MRIs are analyzed. In this work, the textural features are extracted from the MR data of patients and these features are used to classify a patient as belonging to normal (healthy brain) or abnormal (tumor brain). The categorization is obtained using various classifiers such as support vector machine (SVM), radial basis function, multilayer perceptron and k-nearest neighbor. The performance of these classifiers are analyzed and a quantitative indication of how better the SVM performance is when compared with other classifiers is presented. In intelligent computer aided health care system, the proposed classification system using SVM classifier can be used to assist the physician for accurate diagnosis.

In IP networks, packets forwarding performance can be improved by adding more nodes and dividing the network into smaller segments. Being able to measure and predict traffic flows to direct to a given segment can be crucial in respecting traffic shaping, scheduling and QoS. This paper proposes to model network packets forwarding performance for optimization and prediction purposes by using multi-layer feed-forward neural network model that uses sigmoid functions to activate the hidden nodes. Gradient descent technique has been considered to optimize and enhance the MLP accuracy. Simulations of MPL neurons training stages pointed out a relative improvement of the forwarding process when network posses a larger density of neurons. Numerical results validated our theoretical analysis and confirmed that to enhance the forwarding process, it is necessary to divide the network into small segments by optimizing resources allocation.

This paper presents a hybrid approach to recognition of handwritten basic characters of Bangla, the official script of Bangladesh and second most popular script of India. This is a 50 class recognition problem and the proposed recognition approach consists of two stages. In the first stage, a shape feature vector computed from two-directional-view-based strokes of an input character image is used by a hidden Markov model (HMM). This HMM defines its states in a data-driven or adaptive approach. The statistical distribution of the shapes of strokes present in the available training database is modelled as a mixture distribution and each component is a state of the present HMM. The confusion matrix of the training set provided by the HMM classifier of the first stage is analyzed and eight smaller groups of Bangla basic characters are identified within which misclassifications are significant. The second stage of the present recognition approach implements a combination of three multilayer perceptron (MLP) classifiers within each of the above groups of characters. Representations of a character image at multiple resolutions based on a wavelet transform are used as inputs to these MLPs. This two stage recognition scheme has been trained and tested on a recently developed large database of representative samples of handwritten Bangla basic characters and obtained 93.19% and 90.42% average recognition accuracies on its training and test sets respectively.