Multiple Kernel Subspace Learning for Clustering and Classification

In the face of high-dimensional and complex data, effective subspace can preserve specific statistical properties and provide an appropriate representation of data, which generally facilitates the underlying tasks such as clustering or classification. Meanwhile, multiple kernel learning is a technique to combine multiple kernels from different feature spaces effectively. Thus, by incorporating multiple kernels into the process of subspace learning, different feature spaces can be projected into a unified subspace. This article proposes the Multiple Kernel Subspace Learning (MKSL) for embedding the original space into a unified subspace. Multiple kernels of different feature spaces are combined by MKSL in the process of learning, which can extend the suitability for various applications. Moreover, to generate the optimal combination kernel of subspace learning, we propose a two-step iteration strategy to learn the appropriate kernel weights and transformation matrix of projecting simultaneously. Furthermore, our proposed formulation of MKSL can introduce different prior knowledge such as class information and neighborhood relationships. Thus it is competent to the unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning, and supervised learning. Extensive experiments are conducted on diverse datasets, and the performances are comprehensively evaluated on different tasks. The experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm is outstanding in unsupervised clustering task and effective in supervised and semi-supervised classification tasks.