{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,28]],"date-time":"2026-04-28T16:16:44Z","timestamp":1777393004869,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"11","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,12]],"date-time":"2025-11-12T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1762905600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["62303214"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62303214"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["62272239"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62272239"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Symmetry"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Image clustering analysis faces the curse of dimensionality, distance concentration, multimodal landscapes, and rapid diversity loss that challenge meta-heuristics. Meanwhile, the standard Crayfish Optimization Algorithm (COA) has shown notable potential but often suffers from poor convergence speed and premature convergence. To address these issues, this paper introduces a Chaos-initiated and Adaptive Multi-guide Control-based COA (CMCOA). First, a chaotic initialization strategy is employed by explicitly exploiting the reflection symmetry of logistic-map chaotic sequences together with opposition-based learning, which enhances population diversity and facilitates early exploration of promising regions. Second, a fitness-feedback adaptive parameter control mechanism, motivated by the general idea of the MIT rule, is integrated to dynamically balance exploration and exploitation, thereby accelerating convergence while mitigating premature stagnation. Furthermore, a multi-guide stage-switching strategy is designed to avoid being trapped in local optima by promoting adaptive transitions between exploration phases and exploitation phases. CMCOA is benchmarked against competing algorithms on ten challenging test functions drawn from CEC2017, CEC2019, CEC2020, and CEC2022 suites. We also conducted multispectral clustering, where class differences often lie in reflectance magnitude; we adopt Euclidean distance for its efficiency and suitability in capturing such variations. Compared with other algorithms, CMCOA shows faster convergence, higher accuracy, and improved robustness, revealing its broader potential for image analysis tasks.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/sym17111940","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,12]],"date-time":"2025-11-12T10:56:47Z","timestamp":1762945007000},"page":"1940","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["A Chaos-Initiated and Adaptive Multi-Guide Control-Based Crayfish Optimization Algorithm for Image Analysis"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Ziyang","family":"Shen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Engineering Research Center of Post Big Data Technology and Application of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6694-2568","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zhe","family":"Sun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Engineering Research Center of Post Big Data Technology and Application of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Yunrui","family":"Bi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Automation, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zhixin","family":"Sun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Engineering Research Center of Post Big Data Technology and Application of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,12]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Peng, D., Gui, Z., and Wu, H. 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