Robust and adaptive techniques in self-organizing neural networks

Robust and adaptive training algorithms aiming at enhancing the capabilities of self-organizing and Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural networks are reviewed in this paper. The following robust variants of Learning Vector Quantizer (LVQ) are described: the order statistics LVQ, the L-2 LVQ and the split-merge LVQ. Successful application of the marginal median LVQ that belongs to the class of order statistics LVQs in the self-organized selection of the centers in RBF neural networks is reported. Moreover, the use of the median absolute deviation in the estimation of the covariance matrix of the observations assigned to each hidden unit in RBF neural networks is proposed. Applications that prove the superiority of the proposed variants of LVQ and RBF neural networks in noisy color image segmentation, color-based image recognition, segmentation of ultrasonic images, motion-field smoothing and moving object segmentation are outlined.