A new binary object-oriented programming optimization algorithm for solving high-dimensional feature selection problem

Feature selection (FS) is a crucial task in machine learning applications, which aims to select the most appropriate feature subset while maintaining high classification accuracy with the minimum number of selected features. Despite the widespread usage of metaheuristics as wrapper-based FS techniques, they show reduced effectiveness and increased computational cost when applied to high-dimensional datasets. This paper presents a novel Binary Object-Oriented Programming Optimization Algorithm (BOOPOA) for FS of high dimensional datasets, where the Object-Oriented Programming Optimization Algorithm (OOPOA) is a novel optimization technique inspired by the inheritance concept of Object-Oriented programming (OOP) languages. The effectiveness of this method in solving high dimensional FS problems is validated by using 26 datasets, most of which are of high dimension (large number of features). Seven existing FS algorithms are compared with the proposed OOPOA using various metrics, including best fitness, average fitness (AVG), selection size, and computational time. The results prove the superiority of the proposed algorithm over the other FS algorithms, having an average performance of %92.5, 0.078, 0.084, %38.9, and 8.6 min for classification accuracy, best fitness, average fitness, size reduction ratio, and computational time. The outcomes demonstrate the proposed FS approach's superiority over currently used methods.