Sparse-dispersed coding and images discrimination with independent component analysis. Le Borgne, H. & Guérin-Dugué In International Conference on ICA and BSS, 2001.
Sparse-dispersed coding and images discrimination with independent component analysis [pdf]Pdf  abstract   bibtex   1 download  
Independent Component Analysis applied to a set of natural images provides band-pass-oriented filters, similar to simple cells of the primary visual cortex. We applied two types of pre-processing to the images, a low-pass and a whitening one in a multiresolution grid, and examine the properties of the detectors extracted by ICA. These detectors composed a new basis function set in which images are encoded. On one hand, the properties (sparseness and dispersal) of the resulting coding are compared for both pre-processing strategies. On the other hand, this new coding by independent features is used for discriminating natural images, that is a very challenging domain in image analysis and retrieval. We show that a criterion based on the dispersal property enhances the efficiency of the discrimination by selecting the most dispersed detectors coding the image database. This behaviour is well enhanced with whitened images.

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