The Rapid Kernel Classifier: A Link between the Self-Organizing Feature Map and the Radial Basis Function Network

The learning dynamics of a Radial Basis Function (RBF) network is shown to be related to the Learning Vector Quantization algorithm. Based on this similarity, a hybrid training scheme for the RBF network is proposed. The resulting Rapid Kernel Classifier is evaluated using a 6-class radar data set. Considerable speedup in training is obtained with this new scheme. Also, for the one-dimensional case, we prove that the distribution of centroids of the RBF network ap proaches node density of the Self-Organizing Feature Map as a limit. This result suggests a deeper connection between the fundamental learning paradigms, namely supervised and unsupervised learning.