Adaptive Local Fusion With Fuzzy Integrals

We propose a novel method for fusing different classifiers outputs. Our approach, called context extraction for local fusion with fuzzy integrals (CELF-FI), is a local approach that adapts a fuzzy integrals fusion method to different regions of the feature space. It is based on a novel objective function that combines context identification and multialgorithm fusion criteria into a joint objective function. This objective function consists of two terms: The first is designed to produce compact clusters, called contexts, and the second is designed to produce Sugeno measures for fuzzy integral fusion for each context. The terms are optimized simultaneously via alternating optimization. To test a new sample, first, its features (extracted by each algorithm) are used to assign it to each context with a fuzzy membership degree. Second, the sample confidence values (assigned by each algorithm) are fused within each context using the learned context fusion parameters. Then, the context-dependent partial confidence values are weighted by the membership degrees and averaged over all contexts to produce a final confidence value. We illustrate the performance of CELF using synthetic data, and we apply it to the problem of landmine detection using ground penetrating radar and wideband electromagnetic induction. Our extensive experiments have indicated that the proposed fusion approach outperforms all individual classifiers, the global fuzzy integral fusion method, and the basic local fusion with linear aggregation.