Learning from data with uncertain labels by boosting credal classifiers

In this article, we investigate supervised learning when training data are associated with uncertain labels. We tackle this problem within the theory of belief functions. Each training pattern xi is thus associated with a basic belief assignment, representing partial knowledge of its actual class. Here, we propose to use the approach known as boosting to solve the classification problem. We propose a variant of the AdaBoost algorithm where the outputs of the classifiers are interpreted as belief functions. During training, our algorithm estimates the reliability of each classifier to identify patterns from the various classes. During test phase, the outputs of the classifiers are first discounted according to these reliabilities, and then combined using a suitable rule. Experiments conducted on classical datasets show that our algorithm is comparable to AdaBoost in accuracy. Processing EEG data with imperfect labels clearly demonstrates the interest of taking into account the reliability of the labelling, and thus the relevance of our approach.