Multi-modal nonlinear feature reduction for the recognition of handwritten numerals

A novel method of multi-modal nonlinear feature reduction is proposed for the recognition of handwritten numerals. In order to find an effective decision boundary, each class is divided into several clusters. Then the k-NN sorting algorithm is applied to each cluster to get the training data along the effective decision boundary. Optimal discriminant analysis is implemented by multimodal nonlinear mapping to generate a between-class scatter matrix, which requires less CPU time than other nonparametric approaches. Experiments demonstrated that our proposed method could achieve a high feature reduction without sacrificing much discriminant ability. As a result, this new method can reduce ANN training complexity and make the ANN classifier more reliable. Its feature dimensionality reduction outperforms the PCA and mono-modal nonparametric analysis.