A deep matrix factorization method for learning attribute representations

Semi-Non-negative Matrix Factorization is a technique that learns a low-dimensional representation of a dataset that lends itself to a clustering interpretation. It is possible that the mapping between this new representation and our original data matrix contains rather complex hierarchical information with implicit lower-level hidden attributes, that classical one level clustering methodologies can not interpret. In this work we propose a novel model, Deep Semi-NMF, that is able to learn such hidden representations that allow themselves to an interpretation of clustering according to different, unknown attributes of a given dataset. We also present a semi-supervised version of the algorithm, named Deep WSF, that allows the use of (partial) prior information for each of the known attributes of a dataset, that allows the model to be used on datasets with mixed attribute knowledge. Finally, we show that our models are able to learn low-dimensional representations that are better suited for clustering, but also classification, outperforming Semi-Non-negative Matrix Factorization, but also other state-of-the-art methodologies variants.Comment: Submitted to TPAMI (16-Mar-2015

Gaussian process domain experts for model adaptation in facial behavior analysis

We present a novel approach for supervised domain adaptation that is based upon the probabilistic framework of Gaussian processes (GPs). Specifically, we introduce domain-specific GPs as local experts for facial expression classification from face images. The adaptation of the classifier is facilitated in probabilistic fashion by conditioning the target expert on multiple source experts. Furthermore, in contrast to existing adaptation approaches, we also learn a target expert from available target data solely. Then, a single and confident classifier is obtained by combining the predictions from multiple experts based on their confidence. Learning of the model is efficient and requires no retraining/reweighting of the source classifiers. We evaluate the proposed approach on two publicly available datasets for multi-class (MultiPIE) and multi-label (DISFA) facial expression classification. To this end, we perform adaptation of two contextual factors: where (view) and who (subject). We show in our experiments that the proposed approach consistently outperforms both source and target classifiers, while using as few as 30 target examples. It also outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches for supervised domain adaptation