/*=========================================================================

  Program:   Insight Segmentation & Registration Toolkit
  Module:    $RCSfile: itkDecisionRuleBase.h,v $
  Language:  C++
  Date:      $Date: 2005/10/07 23:10:10 $
  Version:   $Revision: 1.7 $

  Copyright (c) Insight Software Consortium. All rights reserved.
  See ITKCopyright.txt or http://www.itk.org/HTML/Copyright.htm for details.

     This software is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even 
     the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR 
     PURPOSE.  See the above copyright notices for more information.

=========================================================================*/
#ifndef __itkDecisionRuleBase_h
#define __itkDecisionRuleBase_h

#include <vector>
#include "vnl/vnl_matrix.h"
#include "itkObject.h"
#include "itkObjectFactory.h"
#include "itkArray.h"
#include "itkVariableLengthVector.h"

namespace itk
{

/** \class DecisionRuleBase
 *  \brief Base class that allows the setting of usage of differnt
 *  decision rules used in classification
 *  This class has the pure virtual function, Evaluate(). Therefore,
 *  any subclass should implement the function to be instantiated.
 */
 
class ITKCommon_EXPORT DecisionRuleBase : public Object
{
public:
  /** Standard class typedefs */ 
  typedef DecisionRuleBase Self ;
  typedef Object Superclass;
  typedef SmartPointer<Self> Pointer;
  typedef SmartPointer<const Self> ConstPointer;
  
  /** Run-time type information (and related methods) */
  itkTypeMacro(DecisionRuleBase, Object);
  
  /** Types for the arguments that are acceptable in the Evaluate() method */
  typedef std::vector< double >            VectorType;
  typedef Array< double >                  ArrayType;
  typedef VariableLengthVector< double >   VariableLengthVectorType;
    
  /** The return value of this function is a class label.
   * Basically, using its internal logic based on the discriminant
   * scores, this function decides best class label and return it.
   */
  virtual unsigned int Evaluate( const VectorType &discriminantScores) const = 0;

  /** The return value of this function is a class label.
   * Basically, using its internal logic based on the discriminant
   * scores, this function decides best class label and return it.
   */
  virtual unsigned int Evaluate( const ArrayType &discriminantScores) const = 0;


protected:
  DecisionRuleBase();
  virtual ~DecisionRuleBase();
  void PrintSelf(std::ostream& os, Indent indent) const;
  
private:
  
} ; // end of class

} // namespace itk

#endif







