An Improved Binary Crayfish Optimization Algorithm for Handling Feature Selection Task in Supervised Classification

Feature selection (FS) is a crucial phase in data mining (DM) and machine learning (ML) tasks, aimed at removing uncorrelated and redundant attributes to enhance classification accuracy. This study introduces an improved binary crayfish optimization algorithm (IBCOA) designed to tackle the FS problem. The IBCOA integrates a local search strategy and a periodic mode boundary handling technique, significantly improving its ability to search and exploit the feature space. By doing so, the IBCOA effectively reduces dimensionality, while improving classification accuracy. The algorithm’s performance was evaluated using support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) classifiers on eighteen multi-scale benchmark datasets. The findings showed that the IBCOA performed better than nine recent binary optimizers, attaining 100% accuracy and decreasing the feature set size by as much as 0.8. Statistical evidence supports that the proposed IBCOA is highly competitive according to the Wilcoxon rank sum test (alpha = 0.05). This study underscores the IBCOA’s potential for enhancing FS processes, providing a robust solution for high-dimensional data challenges.