Artificial immune system

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In computer science, Artificial immune systems (AIS) are computational systems inspired by the principles and processes of the vertebrate immune system. The algorithms typically exploit the immune system's characteristics of learning and memory to solve a problem.

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[edit] Definition

The field of Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) is concerned with abstracting the structure and function of the immune system to computational systems, and investigating the application of these systems towards solving computational problems from mathematics, engineering, and information technology. AIS is a sub-field of Computational intelligence, Biologically-inspired computing, and Natural computation, with interests in Machine Learning and belonging to the broader field of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are adaptive systems, inspired by theoretical immunology and observed immune functions, principles and models, which are applied to problem solving [1].

AIS is distinct from computational immunology and theoretical biology that are concerned with simulating immunology using computational and mathematical models towards better understanding the immune system, although such models initiated the field of AIS and continue to provide a fertile ground for inspiration. Finally, the field of AIS is not concerned with the investigation of the immune system as a substrate computation, such as DNA computing.

[edit] History

AIS began in the mid 1980s with Farmer, Packard and Perelson's (1986) and Bersini and Varela's papers on immune networks (1990). However, it was only in the mid 90s that AIS became a subject area in its own right. Forrest et al. (on negative selection) began in 1994; and Dasgupta conducted extensive studies on Negative Selection Algorithms. Hunt and Cooke started the works on Immune Network models in 1995; Timmis and Neal continued this work and made some improvements. De Castro & Von Zuben's and Nicosia & Cutello's work (on clonal selection) became notable in 2002. The first book on Artificial Immune Systems was edited by Dasgupta in 1999.

New ideas, such as danger theory and algorithms inspired by the innate immune system, are also now being explored. Although some doubt that they are yet offering anything over and above existing AIS algorithms, this is hotly debated, and the debate is providing one the main driving forces for AIS development at the moment.

Originally AIS set out to find efficient abstractions of processes found in the immune system but, more recently, it is becoming interested in modelling the biological processes and in applying immune algorithms to bioinformatics problems.

[edit] Techniques

The common techniques are inspired by specific immunological theories that explain the function and behavior of the mammalian adaptive immune system.

  • Negative Selection Algorithm: Inspired by the positive and negative selection processes that occur during the maturation of T cells in the thymus called T cell tolerance. Negative selection refers to the identification and deletion (apoptosis) of self-reacting cells, that is T cells that may select for and attack self tissues. This class of algorithms are typically used for classification and pattern recognition problem domains where the problem space is modeled in the complement of available knowledge. For example in the case of an anomaly detection domain the algorithm prepares a set of exemplar pattern detectors trained on normal (non-anomalous) patterns that model and detect unseen or anomalous patterns [3].
  • Immune Network Algorithms: Algorithms inspired by the idiotypic network theory proposed by Niels Kaj Jerne that describes the regulation of the immune system by anti-idiotypic antibodies (antibodies that select for other antibodies). This class of algorithms focus on the network graph structures involved where antibodies (or antibody producing cells) represent the nodes and the training algorithm involves growing or pruning edges between the nodes based on affinity (similarity in the problems representation space). Immune network algorithms have been used in clustering, data visualization, control, and optimization domains, and share properties with artificial neural networks [4].

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ de Castro, Leandro N.; Timmis, Jonathan (2002). Artificial Immune Systems: A New Computational Intelligence Approach. Springer. pp. 57–58. ISBN 1852335947, 9781852335946. 
  2. ^ de Castro, L. N.; Von Zuben, F. J. (2002). "Learning and Optimization Using the Clonal Selection Principle" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Special Issue on Artificial Immune Systems (IEEE) 6 (3): 239-251. ftp://ftp.dca.fee.unicamp.br/pub/docs/vonzuben/lnunes/ieee_tec01.pdf. 
  3. ^ Forrest, S.; Perelson, A.S.; Allen, L.; Cherukuri, R. (1994). "Self-nonself discrimination in a computer" (PDF). Proceedings of the 1994 IEEE Symposium on Research in Security and Privacy: 202-212. 
  4. ^ Timmis, J.; Neal, M.; Hunt, J. (2000). "An artificial immune system for data analysis". BioSystems 55 (1): 143–150. 

[edit] References

  • J.D. Farmer, N. Packard and A. Perelson, (1986) "The immune system, adaptation and machine learning", Physica D, vol. 2, pp. 187--204
  • H. Bersini, F.J. Varela, Hints for adaptive problem solving gleaned from immune networks. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, First Workshop PPSW 1, Dortmund, FRG, October, 1990.
  • D. Dasgupta (Editor), Artificial Immune Systems and Their Applications, Springer-Verlag, Inc. Berlin, January 1999, ISBN 3-540-64390-7
  • V. Cutello and G. Nicosia (2002) "An Immunological Approach to Combinatorial Optimization Problems" Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer vol. 2527, pp. 361-370.
  • L. N. de Castro and F. J. Von Zuben, (1999) "Artificial Immune Systems: Part I -Basic Theory and Applications", School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, State University of Campinas, Brazil, No. DCA-RT 01/99.
  • S. Garrett (2005) "How Do We Evaluate Artificial Immune Systems?" Evolutionary Computation, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 145--178. http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/pdf/EVCO_13_2_145_0.pdf
  • V. Cutello, G. Nicosia, M. Pavone, J. Timmis (2007) An Immune Algorithm for Protein Structure Prediction on Lattice Models, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 101-117. http://www.dmi.unict.it/nicosia/papers/journals/Nicosia-IEEE-TEVC07.pdf

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