1. Introduction
The fuzzy set (FS) theory introduced by Zadeh [
1] is applied to various fields and has various successful applications. In FSs, the degree of membership of an element is a single value in the closed interval
. However, in real situations, one may not always be confident that the degree of non-membership of an element in the FS is simply equal to one minus degree of membership. That is to say, there may be a degree of hesitation. For this purpose, the concept of intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) [
2] was introduced by Atanassov as a generalization of FSs. The only limitation of IFSs is that the degree of hesitation is not defined independently. To overcome this shortcoming, Smarandache [
3] proposed the concept of neutrosophic sets (NSs), which were the generalization of IFSs and FSs. After that, some researchers defined subclasses of NSs, such as single-valued neutrosophic sets (SVNSs) [
4], interval neutrosophic sets (INSs) [
5], and simplified neutrosophic sets (SNS) [
6]. Zhang et al. [
7] proposed some basic operational laws for cubic neutrosophic numbers, and defined some aggregation operators for its application to multiple attribute decision making (MADM). Ye et al. [
8] proposed correlation co-efficients for normal neutrosophic numbers, and applied them to MADM. Liu et al. [
9,
10,
11] proposed prioritized aggregation operators and power Heronian-mean aggregation operators for hesitant interval neutrosophic sets, hesitant intuitionistic fuzzy sets, and linguistic neutrosophic sets, and applied them to MADM and multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM).
In recent years, distance and similarity measures gained much more attention from researchers, due to their wide applications in various fields such as data mining, pattern recognition, medical diagnosis, and decision making. For this reason, several distances and similarity measures were developed for IFSs [
12,
13,
14]. De et al. [
15] gave an application of IFSs in medical diagnosis. Dengfeng et al. [
16] and Grzegorzewski et al. [
17] developed some new similarity measures for IFSs based on the Hausdorff metric, and applied them to pattern recognition. Hwang et al. [
18] and Khatibi et al. [
19] proposed similarity measures for IFSs based on the Sugeno integral, and presented their application in pattern recognition. Tang et al. [
20] developed generalized Dice similarity measures for IFSs, and gave their application in MADM. Ye [
21,
22] proposed cosine and Dice similarity measures for IFS and interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IVIFSs). Similar to IFSs, several authors developed distance and similarity measures for NSs and its subclasses. Majumdar et al. [
23] developed similarity and entropy measures for NSs. Ye [
24,
25,
26] further proposed distance and vector similarity measures, and generalized Dice similarity measures for SNSs and INSs, and applied them to MADM. Some authors found drawbacks of the proposed cosine similarity measures for SNSs, and Ye [
27] further proposed improved cosine similarity measures for SNSs, and gave their applications in medical diagnosis and pattern recognition.
Let us consider a situation where we ask someone about a statement; he/she may be sure that the possibility of the statement being true is 0.8, and that the possibility of the statement being false is 0.4. Additionally, the degree to which he/she is not sure but thinks it is true is 0.3, and the degree to which he/she is not sure but thinks it is false is 0.4. In order to deal with such kinds of information, Kandasamy [
28] introduced the concept of double-valued neutrosophic sets (DVNSs) as an alternate form of NSs, providing more reliability and clarity to indeterminacy. In DVNSs, indeterminacy is empathized into two parts: indeterminacy leaning toward truth membership and indeterminacy leaning toward falsity membership. The first refinement of neutrosophic sets was done by Smarandache [
29] in 2013, whereby the truth value (T) was refined into various types of sub-truths such as T
1, T
2, etc., and similarly, indeterminacy (I) was split/refined into various types of sub-indeterminacies such as I
1, I
2, etc., and the sub-falsehood (F) was split into F
1, F
2, etc. DVNSs are a special case of n-valued neutrosophic sets.
Currently, the research on DVNSs is rare, and it is necessary to study some basic theories about DVNSs. As such, the aims of this article were (1) to propose two forms of Dice measures [
30] for DVNSs; (2) to propose two types of weighted Dice measures for DVNSs; (3) to propose weighted generalized Dice measures for DVNSs; and (4) to show the effectiveness of the proposed Dice measures in pattern recognition and medical diagnosis.
In order to do so, the remainder of this article is structured as follows: in
Section 2, some basic concepts related to DVNSs and Dice similarity measures are reviewed; in
Section 3, some Dice measures and weighted Dice measures for DVNSs are proposed; in
Section 4, another form of Dice measure for DVNSs is proposed; in
Section 5, some generalized Dice measures and generalized weighted Dice measures for DVNSs are proposed; in
Section 6, applications of the proposed Dice measures for DVNSs in pattern recognition and medical diagnosis are discussed, using numerical examples. Finally, comparisons, discussions, conclusions, and references are given.
3. Dice Similarity Measures for DVNSs
In this section, we develop some Dice similarity measures for DVNSs, and the related properties are satisfied.
Definition 7. Letandbe two collections of DVNSs. Ifandare theDVNNs inand, respectively, then the Dice distance measure betweenandis defined as Obviously, the above-defined Dice similarity measure between DVNSs,and, satisfies the following assertions: Proof: - (1)
Let us assume the
DVNN in the summation of Equation (3).
Obviously,
, and according to the inequality,
, we have
Therefore, . Hence, from Equation (3), the summation of is .
- (2)
Obviously, it is true.
- (3)
When
then
, so
So, we get
which completes the proof of (8). ☐
In real-life problems, one usually takes the importance degree of each element DVNN
into account. Let
be the importance degree for
with
. Then, based on Equation (3), we further proposed the concept of weighted Dice similarity measures of DVNSs as follows:
In particular, if , then the weighted Dice similarity measure reduces to the Dice similarity measure defined in Equation (3).
Obviously, the above-defined weighted Dice similarity measure between DVNSs,
and
, satisfies the following assertions:
The proof of these properties is the same as above.
The above-defined similarity measures have the disadvantage of not being flexible. So, in the following section, we defined another form of the above Dice similarity measure.
4. Another Form of the Dice Similarity Measure for DVNSs
In this section, another form of the Dice similarity measure for DVNSs is proposed, which is defined below.
Definition 8. Letandbe two DVSSs. Ifandare theDVNNs inand, respectively, then the Dice similarity measure betweenandis defined as Obviously, the above-defined Dice similarity measure in Equation (5) satisfies the following properties:
Proof: The proof is the same as previously shown proofs. ☐
For real applications, the importance degree of each element
is under consideration. Then, let
be the importance degree for
. So, based on Equation (5), we further proposed the concept of weighted Dice similarity measures of DVNSs as follows:
In particular, if , then the weighted Dice similarity measure reduces to the Dice similarity measure defined in Equation (5).
Obviously, the above-defined weighted Dice similarity measures in Equation (6) satisfy the following properties:
As discussed earlier, the above-defined similarity measures have the disadvantage of not being flexible. As such, in the following section, we defined a generalized Dice similarity measure to overcome the shortcoming of the above Dice similarity measures.
5. A Generalized Dice Similarity Measure of DVNSs
In this section, we propose a generalized Dice similarity measure for DVNSs, as a generalization of the above-defined Dice similarity measures.
Definition 9. Letandbe two DVSSs. Ifandare theDVNNs inand, respectively, then the generalized Dice similarity measure betweenandis defined aswhereis a positive parameter for.
Obviously, the above-defined Dice similarity measure between DVNSs,
and
, satisfies the following assertions:
and
Now, we discuss some special cases of generalized Dice similarity measures for the parameter .
- (1)
If
, then the two generalized Dice similarity measures defined in Equation (7) and Equation (8) reduce to Dice similarity measures defined in Equation (3) and Equation (5):
and
- (2)
When
, Equations (7) and (8) reduce to the following asymmetric similarity measures:
From the above investigation, the four asymmetric similarity measures are the extension of the relative projection measure of interval numbers [
31]. Therefore, the four asymmetric similarity measures can be assumed as the projection measures of DVNSs.
For real applications, the importance degree of each element
is under consideration. Then, let
be the importance degree for
. So, based on Equations (7) and (8), we further proposed the concept of weighted generalized Dice similarity measures of DVNSs, which are defined as follows:
In particular, if , then the weighted Dice similarity measure reduces to the Dice similarity measure defined in Equation (7) and Equation (8).
Now, similar to the generalized Dice similarity measures defined in Equation (7) and Equation (8), the weighted generalized similarity measures defined above also have some special cases according to the parameter
- (1)
- (2)
If
, then Equation (13) reduces to the following asymmetric weighted generalized Dice similarity measures:
Similarly, when
in Equation (14), then
- (3)
If
, then Equation (14) reduces to the following asymmetric similarity measures:
From the above investigation, the four asymmetric similarity measures are the extension of the relative projection measure of interval numbers [
31]. Therefore, the four asymmetric similarity measures can be assumed as the projection measures of DVNSs.
7. Comparison and Discussion
A DVN set is a generalization of the neutrosophic set, intuitionistic fuzzy set, and fuzzy set. A DVNS is an illustration of the NS, which provides more perfection and clarity with regards to representing the existing indeterminate, vague, insufficient, and inconsistent information. A DVNS has the additional characteristic of being able to relate, with more sensitivity, the indeterminate and inconsistent information. While an SVNS can handle indeterminate and inconsistent information, it cannot relate the existing indeterminacy.
If we take Example 1 and use the distance measure defined by Kandasamy [
28] for DVNSs, then the Hamming distance and Euclidean distance with known and unknown patterns are given in
Table 11.
From
Table 11, we can see that the unknown pattern,
, belonged to known pattern
. When calculating our proposed Dice measure, we can see from
Table 1, that when parameter
, then the unknown pattern,
, belonged to pattern
. When the value of parameter
was greater than
, that is
, then the unknown pattern,
, belonged to pattern
Furthermore, from
Table 2, we can see that, if the values of parameter
were changed, the unknown pattern,
, belonged to pattern
.
Thus, our proposed Dice similarity measure is more suitable for use in pattern recognition or medical diagnosis.