Structured sparse models for classification

Abstract

The main focus of this thesis is the modeling and classification of high dimensional data using structured sparsity. Sparse models, where data is assumed to be well represented as a linear combination of a few elements from a dictionary, have gained considerable attention in recent years, and its use has led to state-of-the-art results in many signal and image processing tasks. The success of sparse modeling is highly due to its ability to efficiently use the redundancy of the data and find its underlying structure. On a classification setting, we capitalize on this advantage to properly model and separate the structure of the classes. We design and validate modeling solutions to challenging problems arising in computer vision and remote sensing. We propose both supervised and unsupervised schemes for the modeling of human actions from motion imagery under a wide variety of acquisition conditions. In the supervised case, the main goal is to classify the human actions in the video given a predefined set of actions to learn from. In the unsupervised case, the main goal is to analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of the individuals in the scene without having any prior information on the actions themselves. We also propose a model for remotely sensed hysperspectral imagery, where the main goal is to perform automatic spectral source separation and mapping at the subpixel level. Finally, we present a sparse model for sensor fusion to exploit the common structure and enforce collaboration of hyperspectral with LiDAR data for better mapping capabilities. In all these scenarios, we demonstrate that these data can be expressed as a combination of atoms from a class-structured dictionary. These data representation becomes essentially a “mixture of classes,” and by directly exploiting the sparse codes, one can attain highly accurate classification performance with relatively unsophisticated classifiers.