We consider the problem of learning a low-dimensional signal model from a
collection of training samples. The mainstream approach would be to learn an
overcomplete dictionary to provide good approximations of the training samples
using sparse synthesis coefficients. This famous sparse model has a less well
known counterpart, in analysis form, called the cosparse analysis model. In
this new model, signals are characterised by their parsimony in a transformed
domain using an overcomplete (linear) analysis operator. We propose to learn an
analysis operator from a training corpus using a constrained optimisation
framework based on L1 optimisation. The reason for introducing a constraint in
the optimisation framework is to exclude trivial solutions. Although there is
no final answer here for which constraint is the most relevant constraint, we
investigate some conventional constraints in the model adaptation field and use
the uniformly normalised tight frame (UNTF) for this purpose. We then derive a
practical learning algorithm, based on projected subgradients and
Douglas-Rachford splitting technique, and demonstrate its ability to robustly
recover a ground truth analysis operator, when provided with a clean training
set, of sufficient size. We also find an analysis operator for images, using
some noisy cosparse signals, which is indeed a more realistic experiment. As
the derived optimisation problem is not a convex program, we often find a local
minimum using such variational methods. Some local optimality conditions are
derived for two different settings, providing preliminary theoretical support
for the well-posedness of the learning problem under appropriate conditions.Comment: 29 pages, 13 figures, accepted to be published in TS
