An Efficient High-Dimensional Gene Selection Approach based on Binary Horse Herd Optimization Algorithm for Biological Data Classification

Abstract: The Horse Herd Optimization Algorithm (HOA) is a new meta-heuristic algorithm based on the behaviors of horses at different ages. The HOA was introduced recently to solve complex and high-dimensional problems. This paper proposes a binary version of the Horse Herd Optimization Algorithm (BHOA) in order to solve discrete problems and select prominent feature subsets. Moreover, this study provides a novel hybrid feature selection framework based on the BHOA and a minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance (MRMR) filter method. This hybrid feature selection, which is more computationally efficient, produces a beneficial subset of relevant and informative features. Since feature selection is a binary problem, we have applied a new Transfer Function (TF), called X-shape TF, which transforms continuous problems into binary search spaces. Furthermore, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) is utilized to examine the efficiency of the proposed method on ten microarray datasets, namely Lymphoma, Prostate, Brain-1, DLBCL, SRBCT, Leukemia, Ovarian, Colon, Lung, and MLL. In comparison to other state-of-the-art, such as the Gray Wolf (GW), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Genetic Algorithm (GA), the proposed hybrid method (MRMR-BHOA) demonstrates superior performance in terms of accuracy and minimum selected features. Also, experimental results prove that the X-Shaped BHOA approach outperforms others methods.