Memetic Pareto Evolutionary Artificial Neural Networks to determine growth/no-growth in predictive microbiology

The main objective of this work is to automatically design neural network models with sigmoid basis units for binary classification tasks. The classifiers that are obtained achieve a double objective: a high classification level in the dataset and a high classification level for each class. We present MPENSGA2, a Memetic Pareto Evolutionary approach based on the NSGA2 multiobjective evolutionary algorithm which has been adapted to design Artificial Neural Network models, where the NSGA2 algorithm is augmented with a local search that uses the improved Resilient Backpropagation with backtracking—IRprop+ algorithm. To analyze the robustness of this methodology, it was applied to four complex classification problems in Predictive Microbiology to describe the growth/no-growth interface of food-borne microorganisms such as Listeria Monocytogenes, Escherichia Coli R31, Staphylococcus Aureus and Shigella Flexneri. The results obtained in Correct Classification Rate (CCR), Sensitivity (S) as the minimum of sensitivities for each class, Area Under the receiver operating characteristic Curve (AUC), and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), show that the generalization ability and the classification rate in each class can be more efficiently improved within a multiobjective framework than within a single-objective framework. © 2009 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved