Fast and Robust Dictionary-based Classification for Image Data

Dictionary-based classification has been promising in knowledge discovery from image data, due to its good performance and interpretable theoretical system. Dictionary learning effectively supports both small- and large-scale datasets, while its robustness and performance depends on the atoms of the dictionary most of the time. Empirically, using a large number of atoms is helpful to obtain a robust classification, while robustness cannot be ensured when setting a small number of atoms. However, learning a huge dictionary dramatically slows down the speed of classification, which is especially worse on the large-scale datasets. To address the problem, we propose a Fast and Robust Dictionary-based Classification (FRDC) framework, which fully utilizes the learned dictionary for classification by staging l(1)- and l(2)-norms to obtain a robust sparse representation. The new objective function, on the one hand, introduces an additional l(2)-norm term upon the conventional l(1)-norm optimization, which generates a more robust classification. On the other hand, the optimization based on both l(1)- and l(2)-norms is solved in two stages, which is much easier and faster than current solutions. In this way, even when using a limited size of dictionary, which makes sure the classification runs very fast, it still can gain higher robustness for multiple types of image data. The optimization is then theoretically analyzed in a new formulation, close but distinct to elastic-net, to prove it is crucial to improve the performance under the premise of robustness. According to our extensive experiments conducted on four image datasets for face and object classification, FRDC keeps generating a robust classification no matter whether using a small or large number of atoms. This guarantees a fast and robust dictionary-based image classification. Furthermore, when simply using deep features extracted via some popular pre-trained neural networks, it outperforms many state-of-the-art methods on the specific datasets.

Automated summary

Dictionary-based classification is effective in knowledge discovery from image data, but faces challenges in balancing the number of dictionary atoms with classification performance, as well as the speed decrease on large datasets. The proposed FRDC framework improves robustness by introducing l(2)-norm optimization and solving optimization based on both l(1)- and l(2)-norms in stages, enhancing robustness, simplicity, and speed.