Self-organizing maps with a time-varying structure

Abstract

A number of research studies considering a self-organizing map have been developed since such a map was proposed by Kohonen [1982]. Some of these studies concern SOM-based models that do not use pre-defined structures to produce their mappings. We call these models Self-Organizing Maps with Time-Varying Structure (SOM-TVS). Despite the large number of SOM-TVS models there is not a standard way to describe them. In this article, we propose a framework to describe SOM-TVS models, which we use to describe some of these models and to compare their algorithms, and we present some real-world applications of the models presented.