Neutron spectrometry and dosimetry based on a new approach called Genetic Artificial Neural Networks

Artificial Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms are two relatively young research areas that were subject to a steadily growing interest during the past years. The structure of a neural network is a significant contributing factor to its performance and the structure is generally heuristically chosen. The use of evolutionary algorithms as search techniques has allowed different properties of neural networks to be evolved. This paper focuses on the intersection on neural networks and evolutionary computation, namely on how evolutionary algorithms can be used to assist neural network design and training, as a novel approach. In this research, a new evolvable artificial neural network modelling approach is presented, which utilizes an optimization process based on the combination of genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks, and is applied in the design of a neural network, oriented to solve the neutron spectrometry and simultaneous dosimetry problems, using only the count rates measured with a Bonner spheres spectrometer system as entrance data.