International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications

This paper proposes a novel phoneme classification method using facial electromyography (EMG) signals. This method makes use of differential EMG signals between muscles for phoneme classification, which enables a speech synthesizer to be constructed using fewer electrodes. The EMG signal is derived as a differential between monopolar electrodes attached to two different muscles, unlike conventional methods in which the EMG signal is derived as a differential between bipolar electrodes attached to the same muscle. Frequency-based feature patterns are then extracted using a filter bank, and the phonemes are classified using a probabilistic neural network, called a reduced-dimensional log-linearized Gaussian mixture network (RD-LLGMN). Since RD-LLGMN merges feature extraction and pattern classification processes into a single network structure, a lower-dimensional feature set that is consistent with classification purposes can be extracted; consequently, classification performance can be improved. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method with a fewer number of electrodes can achieve a considerably high classification accuracy.

The objective of this research is to illustrate how rough sets can be successfully integrated with mathematical morphology and provide a more effective hybrid approach to resolve medical imaging problems. Hybridization of rough sets and mathematical morphology techniques has been applied to depict their ability to improve the classification of breast cancer images into two outcomes: malignant and benign cancer. Algorithms based on mathematical morphology are first applied to enhance the contrast of the whole original image; to extract the region of interest (ROI) and to enhance the edges surrounding that region. Then, features are extracted characterizing the underlying texture of the ROI by using the gray-level co-occurrence matrix. The rough set approach to attribute reduction and rule generation is further presented. Finally, rough morphology is designed for discrimination of different ROI to test whether they represent malignant cancer or benign cancer. To evaluate performance of the presented rough morphology approach, we tested different mammogram images. The experimental results illustrate that the overall performance in locating optimal orientation offered by the proposed approach is high compared with other hybrid systems such as rough-neural and rough-fuzzy systems.

This paper presents a computational technique for modeling the Earth's magnetic field using the framework of Adaptive Non-Additive Fuzzy System (ANAFS). The defuzzified output constructed from both the premise and consequent parts of the GFM rules takes the form of Choquet integral. Premise and consequent parameters of non-additive fuzzy model are then updated for each online data based on the estimation error to make the adaptive system. The resulting model is applied on the real data, i.e. H-component of the magnetic field obtained from the magnetometer and the training and prediction results are found to be better and can be used for modeling such a complex system whose mathematical or physical modeling is very difficult to obtain. Thus, this work makes an important contribution to the field of fuzzy modeling of real life complex systems.

This paper proposes a method to exchange information among multiple swarms in particle swarm optimization (PSO) to facilitate evolutionary search. The algorithm is developed to solve problems having landscapes with a large number of local optima. Each swarm maintains two sets of particles; one set includes the particles to be shared with other swarms, while the other involves the particles to be replaced by individuals from other swarms. The proposed algorithm also provides a new design to search for neighboring swarms in order to share common interests among the swarm's neighborhood. The particle's movement is according to one variation of PSO with three basic terms, each one to lead the particles toward the best particle in the swarm, in the neighborhood, and in the whole population. Demonstrated through a suite of benchmark test functions, the proposed algorithm shows competitive performance with improved convergence speed.

Propositional satisfiability (SAT) problem is fundamental to the theory of NP-completeness. Indeed, using the concept of "polynomial-time reducibility" all NP-complete problems can be polynomially reduced to SAT. Thus, any new technique for satisfiability problems will lead to general approaches for thousands of hard combinatorial problems. In this paper, we introduce the incremental propositional satisfiability problem that consists of maintaining the satisfiability of a propositional formula anytime a conjunction of new clauses is added. More precisely, the goal here is to check whether a solution to a SAT problem continues to be a solution anytime a new set of clauses is added and if not, whether the solution can be modified efficiently to satisfy the old formula and the new clauses. We will study the applicability of systematic and approximation methods for solving incremental SAT problems. The systematic method is based on the branch and bound technique, whereas the approximation methods rely on stochastic local search (SLS) and genetic algorithms (GAs). A comprehensive empirical study, conducted on a wide range of randomly generated consistent SAT instances, demonstrates the efficiency in time of the approximation methods over the branch and bound algorithm. However, these approximation methods do not guarantee the completeness of the solution returned. We show that a method we propose that uses nonsystematic search in a limited form together with branch and bound has the best compromise, in practice, between time and the success ratio (percentage of instances completely solved).