Particle swarm optimisation for evolving artificial neural network

Abstract

The information processing capability of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is closely related to its architecture and weights. The paper describes a new evolutionary system for evolving artificial feedforward neural networks, which is based on the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm. Both the architecture and the weights of ANNs are adaptively adjusted according to the quality of the neural network. This process is repeated until the best ANN is accepted or the maximum number of generations has been reached. A strategy of evolving added nodes and a partial training algorithm are used to maintain a close behavioural link between the parents and their offspring. This system has been tested on two real problems in the medical domain. The results show that ANNs evolved by PSONN have good accuracy and generalisation ability.