Classifier combination based on confidence transformation

This paper investigates the effects of confidence transformation in combining multiple classifiers using various combination rules. The combination methods were tested in handwritten digit recognition by combining varying classifier sets. The classifier outputs are transformed to confidence measures by combining three scaling functions (global normalization, Gaussian density modeling, and logistic regression) and three confidence types (linear, sigmoid, and evidence). The combination rules include fixed rules (sum-rule, product-rule, median-rule, etc.) and trained rules (linear discriminants and weighted combination with various parameter estimation techniques). The experimental results justify that confidence transformation benefits the combination performance of either fixed rules or trained rules. Trained rules mostly outperform fixed rules, especially when the classifier set contains weak classifiers. Among the trained rules, the support vector machine with linear kernel (linear SVM) performs best while the weighted combination with optimized weights performs comparably well. I have also attempted the joint optimization of confidence parameters and combination weights but its performance was inferior to that of cascaded confidence transformation-combination. This justifies that the cascaded strategy is a right way of multiple classifier combination. (C) 2004 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.