Non-negative matrix factorisation for object class discovery and image auto-annotation
Jiayu Tang, Paul H. Lewis · 2008
In information retrieval, sub-space techniques are usually used to reveal the latent semantic structure of a data-set by projecting it to a low dimensional space. Non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF), which generates a non-negative representation of data through matrix decomposition, is one such technique. It is different from other similar techniques, such as singular vector decomposition (SVD), in its non-negativity constraints which lead to its parts-based representation characteristic. In this paper, we present the novel use of NMF in two tasks; object class detection and automatic annotation of images. Experimental results imply that NMF is a promising sub-space technique for discovering the latent structure of image data-sets, with the ability of encoding the latent topics that correspond to object classes in the basis vectors generated.