A generic approach for image classification based on decision tree ensembles and local sub-windows
Raphaël Marée, Pierre Geurts, Justus Piater, Louis A. Wehenkel, Kibeom Hong, Z. Zhang · ORBi (University of Liège) · 2004
A novel and generic approach for image classification is presented. The method operates directly on pixel values and does not require feature extraction. It combines a simple local sub-window extraction technique with induction of ensembles of extremely randomized decision trees. We report results on four well known and publicly available datasets corresponding to representative applications of image classification problems: handwritten digits (MNIST), faces (ORL), 3D objects (COIL-100), and textures (OUTEX). A comparison with studies from the computer vision literature shows that our method is competitive with the state of the art, an interesting result considering its generality and conceptual simplicity. Further experiments are carried out on the COIL-100 dataset to evaluate the robustness of the learned models to rotation, scaling, or occlusion of test images. These preliminary results are very encouraging.