Self-organizing Map - Alternatives

Alternatives

• The generative topographic map (GTM) is a potential alternative to SOMs. In the sense that a GTM explicitly requires a smooth and continuous mapping from the input space to the map space, it is topology preserving. However, in a practical sense, this measure of topological preservation is lacking.

• The time adaptive self-organizing map (TASOM) network is an extension of the basic SOM. The TASOM employs adaptive learning rates and neighborhood functions. It also includes a scaling parameter to make the network invariant to scaling, translation and rotation of the input space. The TASOM and its variants have been used in several applications including adaptive clustering, multilevel thresholding, input space approximation, and active contour modeling. Moreover, a Binary Tree TASOM or BTASOM, resembling a binary natural tree having nodes composed of TASOM networks has been proposed where the number of its levels and the number of its nodes are adaptive with its environment.

• The growing self-organizing map (GSOM) is a growing variant of the self-organizing map. The GSOM was developed to address the issue of identifying a suitable map size in the SOM. It starts with a minimal number of nodes (usually four) and grows new nodes on the boundary based on a heuristic. By using a value called the spread factor, the data analyst has the ability to control the growth of the GSOM.

• The elastic maps approach borrows from the spline interpolation the idea of minimization of the elastic energy. In learning, it minimizes the sum of quadratic bending and stretching energy with the least squares approximation error.