A high-dimensional classification approach based on class-dependent feature subspace

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to build a compact and accurate classifier for high-dimensional classification. Design/methodology/approach A classification approach based on class-dependent feature subspace (CFS) is proposed. CFS is a class-dependent integration of a support vector machine (SVM) classifier and associated discriminative features. For each class, our genetic algorithm (GA)-based approach evolves the best subset of discriminative features and SVM classifier simultaneously. To guarantee convergence and efficiency, the authors customize the GA in terms of encoding strategy, fitness evaluation, and genetic operators. Findings Experimental studies demonstrated that the proposed CFS-based approach is superior to other state-of-the-art classification algorithms on UCI data sets in terms of both concise interpretation and predictive power for high-dimensional data. Research limitations/implications UCI data sets rather than real industrial data are used to evaluate the proposed approach. In addition, only single-label classification is addressed in the study. Practical implications The proposed method not only constructs an accurate classification model but also obtains a compact combination of discriminative features. It is helpful for business makers to get a concise understanding of the high-dimensional data. Originality/value The authors propose a compact and effective classification approach for high-dimensional data. Instead of the same feature subset for all the classes, the proposed CFS-based approach obtains the optimal subset of discriminative feature and SVM classifier for each class. The proposed approach enhances both interpretability and predictive power for high-dimensional data.