Knowledge modeling methods in the framework of evidence theory: an experimental comparison for melanoma detection

The Dempster-Shafer theory, or evidence theory, is used in different fields such as data fusion, regression or classification. Within the framework of this theory, uncertain and imprecise data are represented using belief functions. Data fusion operators as well as the decision rule of this theory were largely developed and formalized. The aim of the paper is to present modeling methods of knowledge for the initialization of belief functions. Moreover, an experimental comparison of these different modeling methods on real data extracted from images of dermatological lesions is presented.