Kernel autoassociator with applications to visual classification

Abstract

Autoassociator is an important issue in concept learning, and the learned concept of a particular class can be used to distinguish the class from the others. For nonlinear autoassociation, this paper presents a new model referred to as kernel autoassociator. Using kernel feature space as a potential nonlinear manifold, the model formulates the autoassociation as a special reconstruction problem from kernel feature space to input space. Two methods are developed to solve the problem. We evaluate the autoassociator with artificial data, and apply it to handwritten digit recognition and multiview face recognition, yielding positive experimental results.