Sharif Digital Repository

Image classification, i.e. the task of assigning an image to a class chosen from a predefined set of classes, has addressed in this thesis. At first the classifier is divided into two major sub partitions, feature extraction and classifier. Then we show that by using local feature extraction techniques such as BOW the classification accuracy will improve. In addition, using unlabeled data is argued as the fact to deal with high nonlinear structure of features. Recently, many SSL methods have been developed based on the manifold assumption in a batch mode. However, when data arrive sequentially and in large quantities, both computation and storage limitations become a bottleneck. So in large... 

Semi-supervised Learning (SSL) is an extremely useful approach in many applications where unlabeled data can be easily obtained. Graph based methods are among the most studied branches in SSL. Since neighborhood graph is a key component in these methods, we focus on methods of graph construction in this project. Graph construction methods based on Euclidean distance have the common problem of creating shortcut edges. Shortcut edges refer to the edges which connect two nearby points that are far apart on the manifold. Specifically, we show both in theory and practice that using geodesic distance for selecting and weighting edges results in more appropriate neighborhood graphs. We propose an... 

Until now many domain adaptation methods have been proposed. A major limitation of almost all of these methods is their assumption that all test data belong to a single stationary target distribution and a large amount of unlabeled data is available for modeling this target distribution. In fact, in many real world applications, such as classifying scene image with gradually changing lighting and spam email identification, data arrives sequentially and the data distribution is continuously evolving. In this thesis, we tackle the problem of adaptation to a continuously evolving target domain that has been recently introduced and propose the Evolving Domain Adaptation (EDA) method to classify... 

Supervised kernel learning has been the focus of research in recent years. Although these methods are developed based on rigorous frameworks, they fail to improve the classification accuracy in real world applications. In order to find the origin of this problem, it should be noted that the kernel function represents a prior knowledge on the labeling function. Similar to other learning problem, learning this prior knowledge needs another prior knowledge. In supervised kernel learning, only naive assumptions can be used as the prior knowledge. These include minimizing the ℓ1 and ℓ2 norms of the kernel parameters.
As an alternative approach, in Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL), unlabeled...