Deep Learning-Augmented Evolutionary Strategies for Intelligent Global Optimization

This paper introduces the Susceptible-Infected-Removed Optimizer (SIRO), a novel learned heuristic inspired by biological systems and deep learning techniques. SIRO models its search process after the SIR epidemiological compartmental model, predicting the susceptibility, infection, and recovery dynamics of solutions. To enhance its efficiency, SIRO integrates deep learning into its initialization and parameter setting, enabling intelligent and adaptive behavior. This hybridization improves solution quality, accelerates convergence, enhances robustness, and reduces computational costs. The algorithm’s performance was evaluated using CEC 2017 benchmark functions, demonstrating superior results in hybrid functions (C1-C28) despite moderate performance on traditional CEC1-CEC14 functions. Friedman’s test ranked SIRO 4th overall, with SSA as the top-performing algorithm. Additionally, SIRO was tested on real-world optimization problems, including mechanical engineering design and hyperparameter tuning and feature selection for medical image classification. In the classification task, SIRO-enhanced CNN achieved an accuracy of 0.86 at the 5th epoch, outperforming CNN (0.66), CNN-GA (0.76), and CNN-WOA (0.75). Furthermore, SIRO reported a precision of 0.96, recall of 1.0, and F1-score of 0.98, highlighting its effectiveness. These results validate the benefits of integrating a learning mechanism into SIRO, yielding superior precision, computational efficiency, and performance over conventional optimization approaches.