Learning smooth dendrite morphological neurons for pattern classification using linkage trees and evolutionary-based hyperparameter tuning

The current learning approach for smooth dendrite morphological neurons (DMNs) determines dendrite parameters using k-means clustering, which is non-reproducible due to its stochastic nature, risking falling into local minima. To overcome this issue, we introduce a DMN learning approach based on a deterministic hierarchical clustering method, which builds a linkage tree for each class of patterns. In addition, a micro genetic algorithm automatically tunes the cut-off points in the linkage trees hierarchy to create suitable clusters of dendrites. The classification experiments consider 40 real-world datasets. The proposed approach outperforms three DMN models in classification performance and is quite competitive with a hybrid morphological-linear perceptron, multilayer perceptron, random forest, and support vector machine. Therefore, the proposed method is a suitable alternative for pattern classification applications.