Pruning Rule for kMER-Based Acquisition of the Global Topographic Feature Map

For a kernel-based topographic map formation, kMER (kernel-based maximum entropy learning rule) was proposed by Van Hulle, and some effective learning rules related to kMER have been proposed so far with many applications. However, no discusions have been made concerning the determination of the number of units in kMER. This letter describes a unit-pruning rule, which permits automatic contruction of an appropriate-sized map to acquire the global topographic features underlying the input data. The effectiveness and the validity of the present rule have been confirmed by some preliminary computer simulations. key words: self-organizing map, kernel-based topographic map, kMER, pruning rule