In this paper, we study various K nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithms and present a new KNN algorithm based on evidence theory. We introduce global frequency estimation of prior probability (GE) and local frequency estimation of prior probability (LE). A GE for a class is the prior probability of the class across the whole training data space based on frequency estimation; on the other hand, a LE for a class in a particular neighborhood is the prior probability of the class in this neighborhood space based on frequency estimation. By considering the difference between the GE and the LE of each class, we present a solution to the imbalanced data problem in some degree without doing re-sampling. We compare our algorithm with other KNN algorithms using two benchmark datasets. Results show that our KNN algorithm outperforms other KNN algorithms, including basic evidence based KNN.

The development of technology generates huge amounts of non-textual information, such as images. An efficient image annotation and retrieval system is highly desired. Clustering algorithms make it possible to represent visual features of images with finite symbols. Based on this, many statistical models, which analyze correspondence between visual features and words and discover hidden semantics, have been published. These models improve the annotation and retrieval of large image databases. However, current state of the art including our previous work produces too many irrelevant keywords for images during annotation. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that augments the classical model with generic knowledge-based, WordNet. Our novel approach strives to prune irrelevant keywords by the usage of WordNet. To identify irrelevant keywords, we investigate various semantic similarity measures between keywords and finally fuse outcomes of all these measures together to make a final decision using Dempster-Shafer evidence combination. We have implemented various models to link visual tokens with keywords based on knowledge-based, WordNet and evaluated performance using precision, and recall using benchmark dataset. The results show that by augmenting knowledge-based with classical model we can improve annotation accuracy by removing irrelevant keywords.