A new hybrid feature selection approach using feature association map for supervised and unsupervised classification

Feature selection, both for supervised as well as for unsupervised classification is a relevant problem pursued by researchers for decades. There are multiple benchmark algorithms based on filter, wrapper and hybrid methods. These algorithms adopt different techniques which vary from traditional search-based techniques to more advanced nature inspired algorithm based techniques. In this paper, a hybrid feature selection algorithm using graph-based technique has been proposed. The proposed algorithm has used the concept of Feature Association Map (FAM) as an underlying foundation. It has used graph-theoretic principles of minimal vertex cover and maximal independent set to derive feature subset. This algorithm applies to both supervised and unsupervised classification. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been compared with several benchmark supervised and unsupervised feature selection algorithms and found to be better than them. Also, the proposed algorithm is less computationally expensive and hence has taken less execution time for the publicly available datasets used in the experiments, which include high-dimensional datasets. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.