Kernel learning approaches for image classification

This thesis extends the use of kernel learning techniques to specific problems of image classification. Kernel learning is a paradigm in the eld of machine learning that generalizes the use of inner products to compute similarities between arbitrary objects. In image classification one aims to separate images based on their visual content. We address two important problems that arise in this context: learning with weak label information and combination of heterogeneous data sources. The contributions we report on are not unique to image classification, and apply to a more general class of problems. We study the problem of learning with label ambiguity in the multiple instance learning framework. We discuss several different image classification scenarios that arise in this context and argue that the standard multiple instance learning requires a more detailed disambiguation. Finally we review kernel learning approaches proposed for this problem and derive a more efficcient algorithm to solve them. The multiple kernel learning framework is an approach to automatically select kernel parameters. We extend it to its infinite limit and present an algorithm to solve the resulting problem. This result is then applied in two directions. We show how to learn kernels that adapt to the special structure of images. Finally we compare different ways of combining image features for object classification and present significant improvements compared to previous methods.In dieser Dissertation verwenden wir Kernmethoden für spezielle Probleme der Bildklassifikation. Kernmethoden generalisieren die Verwendung von inneren Produkten zu Distanzen zwischen allgemeinen Objekten. Das Problem der Bildklassifikation ist es, Bilder anhand des visuellen Inhaltes zu unterscheiden. Wir beschäftigen uns mit zwei wichtigen Aspekten, die in diesem Problem auftreten: lernen mit mehrdeutiger Annotation und die Kombination von verschiedenartigen Datenquellen. Unsere Ansätze sind nicht auf die Bildklassififikation beschränkt und für einen grösseren Problemkreis verwendbar. Mehrdeutige Annotationen sind ein inhärentes Problem der Bildklassifikation. Wir diskutieren verschiedene Instanzen und schlagen eine neue Unterteilung in mehrere Szenarien vor. Danach stellen wir Kernmethoden für dieses Problem vor und entwickeln einen Algorithmus, der diese effizient löst. Mit der Methode der Kernkombination werden Kernfunktionen anhand von Daten automatisch bestimmt. Wir generalisieren diesen Ansatz indem wir den Suchraum auf kontinuierlich parametrisierte Kernklassen ausgedehnen. Diese Methode wird in zwei verschiedenen Anwendungen eingesetzt. Wir betrachten spezifische Kerne für Bilddaten und lernen diese anhand von Beispielen. Schließlich vergleichen wir verschiedene Verfahren der Merkmalskombination und zeigen signifikante Verbesserungen im Bereich der Objekterkennung gegenüber bestehenden Methoden

Deep Metric Learning and Image Classification with Nearest Neighbour Gaussian Kernels

We present a Gaussian kernel loss function and training algorithm for convolutional neural networks that can be directly applied to both distance metric learning and image classification problems. Our method treats all training features from a deep neural network as Gaussian kernel centres and computes loss by summing the influence of a feature's nearby centres in the feature embedding space. Our approach is made scalable by treating it as an approximate nearest neighbour search problem. We show how to make end-to-end learning feasible, resulting in a well formed embedding space, in which semantically related instances are likely to be located near one another, regardless of whether or not the network was trained on those classes. Our approach outperforms state-of-the-art deep metric learning approaches on embedding learning challenges, as well as conventional softmax classification on several datasets.Comment: Accepted in the International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) 2018. Formerly titled Nearest Neighbour Radial Basis Function Solvers for Deep Neural Network

Tensor-Based Algorithms for Image Classification

Interest in machine learning with tensor networks has been growing rapidly in recent years. We show that tensor-based methods developed for learning the governing equations of dynamical systems from data can, in the same way, be used for supervised learning problems and propose two novel approaches for image classification. One is a kernel-based reformulation of the previously introduced multidimensional approximation of nonlinear dynamics (MANDy), the other an alternating ridge regression in the tensor train format. We apply both methods to the MNIST and fashion MNIST data set and show that the approaches are competitive with state-of-the-art neural network-based classifiers

Convolutional Sparse Kernel Network for Unsupervised Medical Image Analysis

The availability of large-scale annotated image datasets and recent advances in supervised deep learning methods enable the end-to-end derivation of representative image features that can impact a variety of image analysis problems. Such supervised approaches, however, are difficult to implement in the medical domain where large volumes of labelled data are difficult to obtain due to the complexity of manual annotation and inter- and intra-observer variability in label assignment. We propose a new convolutional sparse kernel network (CSKN), which is a hierarchical unsupervised feature learning framework that addresses the challenge of learning representative visual features in medical image analysis domains where there is a lack of annotated training data. Our framework has three contributions: (i) We extend kernel learning to identify and represent invariant features across image sub-patches in an unsupervised manner. (ii) We initialise our kernel learning with a layer-wise pre-training scheme that leverages the sparsity inherent in medical images to extract initial discriminative features. (iii) We adapt a multi-scale spatial pyramid pooling (SPP) framework to capture subtle geometric differences between learned visual features. We evaluated our framework in medical image retrieval and classification on three public datasets. Our results show that our CSKN had better accuracy when compared to other conventional unsupervised methods and comparable accuracy to methods that used state-of-the-art supervised convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Our findings indicate that our unsupervised CSKN provides an opportunity to leverage unannotated big data in medical imaging repositories.Comment: Accepted by Medical Image Analysis (with a new title 'Convolutional Sparse Kernel Network for Unsupervised Medical Image Analysis'). The manuscript is available from following link (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2019.06.005

Feature and Region Selection for Visual Learning

Visual learning problems such as object classification and action recognition are typically approached using extensions of the popular bag-of-words (BoW) model. Despite its great success, it is unclear what visual features the BoW model is learning: Which regions in the image or video are used to discriminate among classes? Which are the most discriminative visual words? Answering these questions is fundamental for understanding existing BoW models and inspiring better models for visual recognition. To answer these questions, this paper presents a method for feature selection and region selection in the visual BoW model. This allows for an intermediate visualization of the features and regions that are important for visual learning. The main idea is to assign latent weights to the features or regions, and jointly optimize these latent variables with the parameters of a classifier (e.g., support vector machine). There are four main benefits of our approach: (1) Our approach accommodates non-linear additive kernels such as the popular $\chi^2$ and intersection kernel; (2) our approach is able to handle both regions in images and spatio-temporal regions in videos in a unified way; (3) the feature selection problem is convex, and both problems can be solved using a scalable reduced gradient method; (4) we point out strong connections with multiple kernel learning and multiple instance learning approaches. Experimental results in the PASCAL VOC 2007, MSR Action Dataset II and YouTube illustrate the benefits of our approach

Toward a General-Purpose Heterogeneous Ensemble for Pattern Classification

We perform an extensive study of the performance of different classification approaches on twenty-five datasets (fourteen image datasets and eleven UCI data mining datasets). The aim is to find General-Purpose (GP) heterogeneous ensembles (requiring little to no parameter tuning) that perform competitively across multiple datasets. The state-of-the-art classifiers examined in this study include the support vector machine, Gaussian process classifiers, random subspace of adaboost, random subspace of rotation boosting, and deep learning classifiers. We demonstrate that a heterogeneous ensemble based on the simple fusion by sum rule of different classifiers performs consistently well across all twenty-five datasets. The most important result of our investigation is demonstrating that some very recent approaches, including the heterogeneous ensemble we propose in this paper, are capable of outperforming an SVM classifier (implemented with LibSVM), even when both kernel selection and SVM parameters are carefully tuned for each dataset

Insights from Classifying Visual Concepts with Multiple Kernel Learning

Combining information from various image features has become a standard technique in concept recognition tasks. However, the optimal way of fusing the resulting kernel functions is usually unknown in practical applications. Multiple kernel learning (MKL) techniques allow to determine an optimal linear combination of such similarity matrices. Classical approaches to MKL promote sparse mixtures. Unfortunately, so-called 1-norm MKL variants are often observed to be outperformed by an unweighted sum kernel. The contribution of this paper is twofold: We apply a recently developed non-sparse MKL variant to state-of-the-art concept recognition tasks within computer vision. We provide insights on benefits and limits of non-sparse MKL and compare it against its direct competitors, the sum kernel SVM and the sparse MKL. We report empirical results for the PASCAL VOC 2009 Classification and ImageCLEF2010 Photo Annotation challenge data sets. About to be submitted to PLoS ONE.Comment: 18 pages, 8 tables, 4 figures, format deviating from plos one submission format requirements for aesthetic reason