Comparison of dimension reduction algorithms over mandala images generation

Introduction

This document discusses concrete algorithms for two different approaches of generation of mandala images, [1]: direct construction with graphics primitives, and use of machine learning algorithms.

In the experiments described in this document better results were obtained with the direct algorithms. The direct algorithms were made for the Mathematica StackExchange question "Code that generates a mandala", [3].

The main goals of this document are:

1. to show some pretty images exploiting symmetry and multiplicity (see this album),

2. to provide an illustrative example of comparing dimension reduction methods,

3. to give a set-up for further discussions and investigations on mandala creation with machine learning algorithms.

Two direct construction algorithms are given: one uses "seed" segment rotations, the other superimposing of layers of different types. The following plots show the order in which different mandala parts are created with each of the algorithms.

In this document we use several algorithms for dimension reduction applied to collections of images following the procedure described in [4,5]. We are going to show that with Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) we can use mandalas made with the seed segment rotation algorithm to extract layer types and superimpose them to make colored mandalas. Using the same approach with Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) or Independent Component Analysis (ICA) does not produce good layers and the superimposition produces more "watered-down", less diverse mandalas.

From a more general perspective this document compares the statistical approach of "trying to see without looking" with the "direct simulation" approach. Another perspective is the creation of "design spaces"; see [6].

The idea of using machine learning algorithms is appealing because there is no need to make the mental effort of understanding, discerning, approximating, and programming the principles of mandala creation. We can "just" use a large collection of mandala images and generate new ones using the "internal knowledge" data of machine learning algorithms. For example, a Neural network system like Deep Dream, [2], might be made to dream of mandalas.

Direct algorithms for mandala generation

In this section we present two different algorithms for generating mandalas. The first sees a mandala as being generated by rotation of a "seed" segment. The second sees a mandala as being generated by different component layers. For other approaches see [3].

The request of [3] is for generation of mandalas for coloring by hand. That is why the mandala generation algorithms are in the grayscale space. Coloring the generated mandala images is a secondary task.

By seed segment rotations

One way to come up with mandalas is to generate a segment and then by appropriate number of rotations to produce a mandala.

Here is a function and an example of random segment (seed) generation:

Clear[MakeSeedSegment]
MakeSeedSegment[radius_, angle_, n_Integer: 10, 
   connectingFunc_: Polygon, keepGridPoints_: False] :=
  Block[{t},
   t = Table[
     Line[{radius*r*{Cos[angle], Sin[angle]}, {radius*r, 0}}], {r, 0, 1, 1/n}];
   Join[If[TrueQ[keepGridPoints], t, {}], {GrayLevel[0.25], 
     connectingFunc@RandomSample[Flatten[t /. Line[{x_, y_}] :> {x, y}, 1]]}]
   ];

seed = MakeSeedSegment[10, Pi/12, 10];
Graphics[seed, Frame -> True]

This function can make a seed segment symmetric:

Clear[MakeSymmetric]
MakeSymmetric[seed_] := {seed, 
   GeometricTransformation[seed, ReflectionTransform[{0, 1}]]};

seed = MakeSymmetric[seed];
Graphics[seed, Frame -> True]

Using a seed we can generate mandalas with different specification signatures:

Clear[MakeMandala]
MakeMandala[opts : OptionsPattern[]] :=      
  MakeMandala[
   MakeSymmetric[
    MakeSeedSegment[20, Pi/12, 12, 
     RandomChoice[{Line, Polygon, BezierCurve, 
       FilledCurve[BezierCurve[#]] &}], False]], Pi/6, opts];

MakeMandala[seed_, angle_?NumericQ, opts : OptionsPattern[]] :=      
  Graphics[GeometricTransformation[seed, 
    Table[RotationMatrix[a], {a, 0, 2 Pi - angle, angle}]], opts];

This code randomly selects symmetricity and seed generation parameters (number of concentric circles, angles):

SeedRandom[6567]
n = 12;
Multicolumn@
 MapThread[
  Image@If[#1,
     MakeMandala[MakeSeedSegment[10, #2, #3], #2],
     MakeMandala[
      MakeSymmetric[MakeSeedSegment[10, #2, #3, #4, False]], 2 #2]
     ] &, {RandomChoice[{False, True}, n], 
   RandomChoice[{Pi/7, Pi/8, Pi/6}, n], 
   RandomInteger[{8, 14}, n], 
   RandomChoice[{Line, Polygon, BezierCurve, 
     FilledCurve[BezierCurve[#]] &}, n]}]

Here is a more concise way to generate symmetric segment mandalas:

Multicolumn[Table[Image@MakeMandala[], {12}], 5]

Note that with this approach the programming of the mandala coloring is not that trivial — weighted blending of colorized mandalas is the easiest thing to do. (Shown below.)

By layer types

This approach was given by Simon Woods in [3].

"For this one I’ve defined three types of layer, a flower, a simple circle and a ring of small circles. You could add more for greater variety."

The coloring approach with image blending given below did not work well for this algorithm, so I modified the original code in order to produce colored mandalas.

ClearAll[LayerFlower, LayerDisk, LayerSpots, MandalaByLayers]

LayerFlower[n_, a_, r_, colorSchemeInd_Integer] := 
  Module[{b = RandomChoice[{-1/(2 n), 0}]}, {If[
     colorSchemeInd == 0, White, 
     RandomChoice[ColorData[colorSchemeInd, "ColorList"]]], 
    Cases[ParametricPlot[
      r (a + Cos[n t])/(a + 1) {Cos[t + b Sin[2 n t]], Sin[t + b Sin[2 n t]]}, {t, 0, 2 Pi}], 
     l_Line :> FilledCurve[l], -1]}];

LayerDisk[_, _, r_, colorSchemeInd_Integer] := {If[colorSchemeInd == 0, White, 
    RandomChoice[ColorData[colorSchemeInd, "ColorList"]]], 
   Disk[{0, 0}, r]};

LayerSpots[n_, a_, r_, colorSchemeInd_Integer] := {If[colorSchemeInd == 0, White, 
    RandomChoice[ColorData[colorSchemeInd, "ColorList"]]], 
   Translate[Disk[{0, 0}, r a/(4 n)], r CirclePoints[n]]};

MandalaByLayers[n_, m_, coloring : (False | True) : False, opts : OptionsPattern[]] := 
  Graphics[{EdgeForm[Black], White, 
    Table[RandomChoice[{3, 2, 1} -> {LayerFlower, LayerDisk, LayerSpots}][n, RandomReal[{3, 5}], i, 
       If[coloring, RandomInteger[{1, 17}], 0]]~Rotate~(Pi i/n), {i, m, 1, -1}]}, opts];

Here are generated black-and-white mandalas.

SeedRandom[6567]
ImageCollage[Table[Image@MandalaByLayers[16, 20], {12}], Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 1200]

Here are some colored mandalas. (Which make me think more of Viking and Native American art than mandalas.)

ImageCollage[Table[Image@MandalaByLayers[16, 20, True], {12}], Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 1200]

Training data

Images by direct generation

iSize = 400;

SeedRandom[6567]
AbsoluteTiming[
 mandalaImages = 
   Table[Image[
     MakeMandala[
      MakeSymmetric@
       MakeSeedSegment[10, Pi/12, 12, RandomChoice[{Polygon, FilledCurve[BezierCurve[#]] &}]], Pi/6], 
     ImageSize -> {iSize, iSize}, ColorSpace -> "Grayscale"], {300}];
 ]

(* {39.31, Null} *)

ImageCollage[ColorNegate /@ RandomSample[mandalaImages, 12], Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 400]

External image data

See the section "Using World Wide Web images".

Direct blending

The most interesting results are obtained with the image blending procedure coded below over mandala images generated with the seed segment rotation algorithm.

SeedRandom[3488]
directBlendingImages = Table[
   RemoveBackground@
    ImageAdjust[
     Blend[Colorize[#, 
         ColorFunction -> 
          RandomChoice[{"IslandColors", "FruitPunchColors", 
            "AvocadoColors", "Rainbow"}]] & /@ 
       RandomChoice[mandalaImages, 4], RandomReal[1, 4]]], {36}];

ImageCollage[directBlendingImages, Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 1200]

Dimension reduction algorithms application

In this section we are going to apply the dimension reduction algorithms Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) to a linear vector space representation (a matrix) of an image dataset. In the next section we use the bases generated by those algorithms to make mandala images.
We are going to use the packages [7,8] for ICA and NNMF respectively.

Import["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antononcube/MathematicaForPrediction/master/IndependentComponentAnalysis.m"]
Import["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antononcube/MathematicaForPrediction/master/NonNegativeMatrixFactorization.m"]

Linear vector space representation

The linear vector space representation of the images is simple — each image is flattened to a vector (row-wise), and the image vectors are put into a matrix.

mandalaMat = Flatten@*ImageData@*ColorNegate /@ mandalaImages;
Dimensions[mandalaMat]

(* {300, 160000} *)

Re-factoring and basis images

The following code re-factors the images matrix with SVD, ICA, and NNMF and extracts the basis images.

AbsoluteTiming[
 svdRes = SingularValueDecomposition[mandalaMat, 20];
]
(* {5.1123, Null} *)

svdBasisImages = Map[ImageAdjust@Image@Partition[#, iSize] &, Transpose@svdRes[[3]]];

AbsoluteTiming[
 icaRes = 
   IndependentComponentAnalysis[Transpose[mandalaMat], 20, 
    PrecisionGoal -> 4, "MaxSteps" -> 100];
]
(* {23.41, Null} *)

icaBasisImages = Map[ImageAdjust@Image@Partition[#, iSize] &, Transpose[icaRes[[1]]]];

SeedRandom[452992]
AbsoluteTiming[
 nnmfRes = 
   GDCLS[mandalaMat, 20, PrecisionGoal -> 4, 
    "MaxSteps" -> 20, "RegularizationParameter" -> 0.1];
 ]
(* {233.209, Null} *)

nnmfBasisImages = Map[ImageAdjust@Image@Partition[#, iSize] &, nnmfRes[[2]]];

Bases

Let us visualize the bases derived with the matrix factorization methods.

Grid[{{"SVD", "ICA", "NNMF"},
      Map[ImageCollage[#, Automatic, {400, 500}, 
        Background -> LightBlue, ImagePadding -> 5, ImageSize -> 350] &, 
      {svdBasisImages, icaBasisImages, nnmfBasisImages}]
     }, Dividers -> All]

"Mandala-SVD-ICA-NNMF-bases-20"

Here are some observations for the bases.

1. The SVD basis has an average mandala image as its first vector and the other vectors are "differences" to be added to that first vector.

2. The SVD and ICA bases are structured similarly. That is because ICA and SVD are both based on orthogonality — ICA factorization uses an orthogonality criteria based on Gaussian noise properties (which is more relaxed than SVD’s standard orthogonality criteria.)

3. As expected, the NNMF basis images have black background because of the enforced non-negativity. (Black corresponds to 0, white to 1.)

4. Compared to the SVD and ICA bases the images of the NNMF basis are structured in a radial manner. This can be demonstrated using image binarization.

Grid[{{"SVD", "ICA", "NNMF"}, Map[ImageCollage[Binarize[#, 0.5] & /@ #, Automatic, {400, 500}, Background -> LightBlue, ImagePadding -> 5, ImageSize -> 350] &, {svdBasisImages, icaBasisImages, nnmfBasisImages}] }, Dividers -> All]

We can see that binarizing of the NNMF basis images shows them as mandala layers. In other words, using NNMF we can convert the mandalas of the seed segment rotation algorithm into mandalas generated by an algorithm that superimposes layers of different types.

Blending with image bases samples

In this section we just show different blending images using the SVD, ICA, and NNMF bases.

Blending function definition

ClearAll[MandalaImageBlending]
Options[MandalaImageBlending] = {"BaseImage" -> {}, "BaseImageWeight" -> Automatic, "PostBlendingFunction" -> (RemoveBackground@*ImageAdjust)};
MandalaImageBlending[basisImages_, nSample_Integer: 4, n_Integer: 12, opts : OptionsPattern[]] :=      
  Block[{baseImage, baseImageWeight, postBlendingFunc, sImgs, sImgWeights},
   baseImage = OptionValue["BaseImage"];
   baseImageWeight = OptionValue["BaseImageWeight"];
   postBlendingFunc = OptionValue["PostBlendingFunction"];
   Table[(
     sImgs = 
      Flatten@Join[{baseImage}, RandomSample[basisImages, nSample]];
     If[NumericQ[baseImageWeight] && ImageQ[baseImage],
      sImgWeights = 
       Join[{baseImageWeight}, RandomReal[1, Length[sImgs] - 1]],
      sImgWeights = RandomReal[1, Length[sImgs]]
      ];
     postBlendingFunc@
      Blend[Colorize[#, 
          DeleteCases[{opts}, ("BaseImage" -> _) | ("BaseImageWeight" -> _) | ("PostBlendingFunction" -> _)],               
          ColorFunction -> 
           RandomChoice[{"IslandColors", "FruitPunchColors", 
             "AvocadoColors", "Rainbow"}]] & /@ sImgs, 
       sImgWeights]), {n}]
   ];

SVD image basis blending

SeedRandom[17643]
svdBlendedImages = MandalaImageBlending[Rest@svdBasisImages, 4, 24];
ImageCollage[svdBlendedImages, Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 1200]

SeedRandom[17643]
svdBlendedImages = MandalaImageBlending[Rest@svdBasisImages, 4, 24, "BaseImage" -> First[svdBasisImages], "BaseImageWeight" -> 0.5];
ImageCollage[svdBlendedImages, Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 1200]

ICA image basis blending

SeedRandom[17643]
icaBlendedImages = MandalaImageBlending[Rest[icaBasisImages], 4, 36, "BaseImage" -> First[icaBasisImages], "BaseImageWeight" -> Automatic];
ImageCollage[icaBlendedImages, Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 1200]

NNMF image basis blending

SeedRandom[17643]
nnmfBlendedImages = MandalaImageBlending[nnmfBasisImages, 4, 36];
ImageCollage[nnmfBlendedImages, Background -> White, ImagePadding -> 3, ImageSize -> 1200]

Using World Wide Web images

A natural question to ask is:

What would be the outcomes of the above procedures to mandala images found in the World Wide Web (WWW) ?

Those WWW images are most likely man made or curated.

The short answer is that the results are not that good. Better results might be obtained using a larger set of WWW images (than just 100 in the experiment results shown below.)

Here is a sample from the WWW mandala images:

Here are the results obtained with NNMF basis:

Future plans

My other motivation for writing this document is to set up a basis for further investigations and discussions on the following topics.

1. Having a large image database of "real world", human made mandalas.

2. Utilization of Neural Network algorithms to mandala creation.

3. Utilization of Cellular Automata to mandala generation.

4. Investigate mandala morphing and animations.

5. Making a domain specific language of specifications for mandala creation and modification.

The idea of using machine learning algorithms for mandala image generation was further supported by an image classifier that recognizes fairly well (suitably normalized) mandala images obtained in different ways:

References

[1] Wikipedia entry: Mandala, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala .

[2] Wikipedia entry: DeepDream, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepDream .

[3] "Code that generates a mandala", Mathematica StackExchange, http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/136974 .

[4] Anton Antonov, "Comparison of PCA and NNMF over image de-noising", (2016), MathematicaForPrediction at WordPress blog. URL: https://mathematicaforprediction.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/comparison-of-pca-and-nnmf-over-image-de-noising/ .

[5] Anton Antonov, "Handwritten digits recognition by matrix factorization", (2016), MathematicaForPrediction at WordPress blog. URL: https://mathematicaforprediction.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/handwritten-digits-recognition-by-matrix-factorization/ .

[6] Chris Carlson, "Social Exploration of Design Spaces: A Proposal", (2016), Wolfram Technology Conference 2016. URL: http://wac .36f4.edgecastcdn.net/0036F4/pub/www.wolfram.com/technology-conference/2016/SocialExplorationOfDesignSpaces.nb , YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK2523nfcms .

[7] Anton Antonov, Independent Component Analysis Mathematica package, (2016), source code at MathematicaForPrediction at GitHub, package IndependentComponentAnalysis.m .

[8] Anton Antonov, Implementation of the Non-Negative Matrix Factorization algorithm in Mathematica, (2013), source code at MathematicaForPrediction at GitHub, package NonNegativeMatrixFactorization.m.

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Handwritten digits recognition by matrix factorization

Introduction

This MathematicaVsR at GitHub project is for comparing Mathematica and R for the tasks of classifier creation, execution, and evaluation using the MNIST database of images of handwritten digits.

Here are the bases built with two different classifiers:

• Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)

• Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF)

Comparison of PCA, NNMF, and ICA over image de-noising

Introduction

In a previous blog post, [1], I compared Principal Component Analysis (PCA) / Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) over a collection of noised images of digit handwriting from the MNIST data set, [3], which is available in Mathematica.

This blog post adds to that comparison the use of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) proclaimed in my previous blog post, [1].

Computations

The ICA related additional computations to those in [1] follow.

First we load the package IndependentComponentAnalysis.m :

Import["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antononcube/\
MathematicaForPrediction/master/IndependentComponentAnalysis.m"]

From that package we can use the function IndependentComponentAnalysis to find components:

{S, A} = IndependentComponentAnalysis[Transpose[noisyTestImagesMat], 9, PrecisionGoal -> 4.5];
Norm[noisyTestImagesMat - Transpose[S.A]]/Norm[noisyTestImagesMat]
(* 0.592739 *)

Let us visualize the norms of the mixing matrix A :

norms = Norm /@ A;
ListPlot[norms, PlotRange -> All, PlotLabel -> "Norms of A rows", 
    PlotTheme -> "Detailed"] // 
        ColorPlotOutliers[TopOutliers@*HampelIdentifierParameters]
pos = OutlierPosition[norms, TopOutliers@*HampelIdentifierParameters]

Next we can visualize the found "source" images:

ncol = 2;
Grid[Partition[Join[
 MapIndexed[{#2[[1]], Norm[#], 
   ImageAdjust@Image[Partition[#, dims[[1]]]]} &, 
 Transpose[S]] /. (# -> Style[#, Red] & /@ pos),
Table["", {ncol - QuotientRemainder[Dimensions[S][[2]], ncol][[2]]}]
], ncol], Dividers -> All]

After selecting several of source images we zero the rest by modifying the matrix A:

pos = {6, 7, 9};
norms = Norm /@ A;
dA = DiagonalMatrix[
 ReplacePart[ConstantArray[0, Length[norms]], Map[List, pos] -> 1]];
newMatICA = 
 Transpose[Map[# + Mean[Transpose[noisyTestImagesMat]] &, S.dA.A]];
  denoisedImagesICA = Map[Image[Partition[#, dims[[2]]]] &, newMatICA];

Visual comparison of de-noised images

Next we visualize the ICA de-noised images together with the original images and the SVD and NNMF de-noised ones.

There are several ways to present that combination of images.

Comparison using classifiers

We can further compare the de-noising results by building digit classifiers and running them over the de-noised images.

icaCM = ClassifierMeasurements[digitCF, 
    Thread[(Binarize[#, 0.55] &@*ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@ 
        denoisedImagesICA) -> testImageLabels]]

We can see that with ICA we get better results than with PCA/SVD, probably not as good as NNMF, but very close.

All images of this blog post

References

[1] A. Antonov, "Comparison of PCA and NNMF over image de-noising", (2016), MathematicaForPrediction at WordPress.

[2] A. Antonov, "Independent Component Analysis for multidimensional signals", (2016), MathematicaForPrediction at WordPress.

[3] Wikipedia entry, MNIST database.

Comparison of PCA and NNMF over image de-noising

This post compares two dimension reduction techniques Principal Component Analysis (PCA) / Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) over a set of images with two different classes of signals (two digits below) produced by different generators and overlaid with different types of noise.

PCA/SVD produces somewhat good results, but NNMF often provides great results. The factors of NNMF allow interpretation of the basis vectors of the dimension reduction, PCA in general does not. This can be seen in the example below.

Data

First let us get some images. I am going to use the MNIST dataset for clarity. (And because I experimented with similar data some time ago — see Classification of handwritten digits.).

MNISTdigits = ExampleData[{"MachineLearning", "MNIST"}, "TestData"];
{testImages, testImageLabels} = 
  Transpose[List @@@ RandomSample[Cases[MNISTdigits, HoldPattern[(im_ -> 0 | 4)]], 100]];
testImages

See the breakdown of signal classes:

Tally[testImageLabels]
(* {{4, 48}, {0, 52}} *)

Verify the images have the same sizes:

Tally[ImageDimensions /@ testImages]
dims = %[[1, 1]]

Add different kinds of noise to the images:

noisyTestImages6 = 
  Table[ImageEffect[
    testImages[[i]], 
    {RandomChoice[{"GaussianNoise", "PoissonNoise", "SaltPepperNoise"}], RandomReal[1]}], {i, Length[testImages]}];
RandomSample[Thread[{testImages, noisyTestImages6}], 15]

Since the important values of the signals are 0 or close to 0 we negate the noisy images:

negNoisyTestImages6 = ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@ noisyTestImages6

Linear vector space representation

We unfold the images into vectors and stack them into a matrix:

noisyTestImagesMat = (Flatten@*ImageData) /@ negNoisyTestImages6;
Dimensions[noisyTestImagesMat]

(* {100, 784} *)

Here is centralized version of the matrix to be used with PCA/SVD:

cNoisyTestImagesMat = 
  Map[# - Mean[noisyTestImagesMat] &, noisyTestImagesMat];

(With NNMF we want to use the non-centralized one.)

Here confirm the values in those matrices:

Grid[{Histogram[Flatten[#], 40, PlotRange -> All, 
     ImageSize -> Medium] & /@ {noisyTestImagesMat, 
    cNoisyTestImagesMat}}]

SVD dimension reduction

For more details see the previous answers.

{U, S, V} = SingularValueDecomposition[cNoisyTestImagesMat, 100];
ListPlot[Diagonal[S], PlotRange -> All, PlotTheme -> "Detailed"]
dS = S;
Do[dS[[i, i]] = 0, {i, Range[10, Length[S], 1]}]
newMat = U.dS.Transpose[V];
denoisedImages = 
  Map[Image[Partition[# + Mean[noisyTestImagesMat], dims[[2]]]] &, newMat];

Here are how the new basis vectors look like:

Take[#, 50] &@
 MapThread[{#1, Norm[#2], 
    ImageAdjust@Image[Partition[Rescale[#3], dims[[1]]]]} &, {Range[
    Dimensions[V][[2]]], Diagonal[S], Transpose[V]}]

Basically, we cannot tell much from these SVD basis vectors images.

Load packages

Here we load the packages for what is computed next:

Import["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antononcube/MathematicaForPrediction/master/NonNegativeMatrixFactorization.m"]

Import["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antononcube/MathematicaForPrediction/master/OutlierIdentifiers.m"]

The blog post “Statistical thesaurus from NPR podcasts” discusses an example application of NNMF and has links to documents explaining the theory behind the NNMF utilization.

The outlier detection package is described in a previous blog post “Outlier detection in a list of numbers”.

NNMF

This command factorizes the image matrix into the product W H :

{W, H} = GDCLS[noisyTestImagesMat, 20, "MaxSteps" -> 200];
{W, H} = LeftNormalizeMatrixProduct[W, H];

Dimensions[W]
Dimensions[H]

(* {100, 20} *)
(* {20, 784} *)

The rows of H are interpreted as new basis vectors and the rows of W are the coordinates of the images in that new basis. Some appropriate normalization was also done for that interpretation. Note that we are using the non-normalized image matrix.

Let us see the norms of $H$ and mark the top outliers:

norms = Norm /@ H;
ListPlot[norms, PlotRange -> All, PlotLabel -> "Norms of H rows", 
  PlotTheme -> "Detailed"] // 
 ColorPlotOutliers[TopOutliers@*HampelIdentifierParameters]
OutlierPosition[norms, TopOutliers@*HampelIdentifierParameters]
OutlierPosition[norms, TopOutliers@*SPLUSQuartileIdentifierParameters]

Here is the interpretation of the new basis vectors (the outliers are marked in red):

MapIndexed[{#2[[1]], Norm[#], Image[Partition[#, dims[[1]]]]} &, H] /. (# -> Style[#, Red] & /@ 
   OutlierPosition[norms, TopOutliers@*HampelIdentifierParameters])

Using only the outliers of $H$ let us reconstruct the image matrix and the de-noised images:

pos = {1, 6, 10}
dHN = Total[norms]/Total[norms[[pos]]]*
   DiagonalMatrix[
    ReplacePart[ConstantArray[0, Length[norms]], 
     Map[List, pos] -> 1]];
newMatNNMF = W.dHN.H;
denoisedImagesNNMF = 
  Map[Image[Partition[#, dims[[2]]]] &, newMatNNMF];

Often we cannot just rely on outlier detection and have to hand pick the basis for reconstruction. (Especially when we have more than one classes of signals.)

Comparison

At this point we can plot all images together for comparison:

imgRows = 
  Transpose[{testImages, noisyTestImages6, 
    ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@ denoisedImages, 
    ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@ denoisedImagesNNMF}];
With[{ncol = 5}, 
 Grid[Prepend[Partition[imgRows, ncol], 
   Style[#, Blue, FontFamily -> "Times"] & /@ 
    Table[{"original", "noised", "SVD", "NNMF"}, ncol]]]]

We can see that NNMF produces cleaner images. This can be also observed/confirmed using threshold binarization — the NNMF images are much cleaner.

imgRows =
  With[{th = 0.5},
   MapThread[{#1, #2, Binarize[#3, th], 
      Binarize[#4, th]} &, {testImageLabels, noisyTestImages6, 
     ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@ denoisedImages, 
     ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@ denoisedImagesNNMF}]];
With[{ncol = 5}, 
 Grid[Prepend[Partition[imgRows, ncol], 
   Style[#, Blue, FontFamily -> "Times"] & /@ 
    Table[{"label", "noised", "SVD", "NNMF"}, ncol]]]]

Usually with NNMF in order to get good results we have to do more that one iteration of the whole factorization and reconstruction process. And of course NNMF is much slower. Nevertheless, we can see clear advantages of NNMF’s interpretability and leveraging it.

Gallery with other experiments

In those experiments I had to hand pick the NNMF basis used for the reconstruction. Using outlier detection without supervision would not produce good results most of the time.

Further comparison with Classify

We can further compare the de-noising results by building signal (digit) classifiers and running them over the de-noised images.

For such a classifier we have to decide:

1. do we train only with images of the two signal classes or over a larger set of signals;
2. how many signals we train with;
3. with what method the classifiers are built.

Below I use the default method of Classify with all digit images in MNIST that are not in the noised images set. The classifier is run with the de-noising traced these 0-4 images:

Get the images:

{trainImages, trainImageLabels} = Transpose[List @@@ Cases[MNISTdigits, HoldPattern[(im_ -> _)]]];
pred = Map[! MemberQ[testImages, #] &, trainImages];
trainImages = Pick[trainImages, pred];
trainImageLabels = Pick[trainImageLabels, pred];
Tally[trainImageLabels]
    
(* {{0, 934}, {1, 1135}, {2, 1032}, {3, 1010}, {4, 928}, {5, 892}, {6, 958}, {7, 1028}, {8, 974}, {9, 1009}} *)

Build the classifier:

digitCF = Classify[trainImages -> trainImageLabels]

Compute classifier measurements for the original, the PCA de-noised, and NNMF de-noised images:

origCM = ClassifierMeasurements[digitCF, Thread[(testImages) -> testImageLabels]]
    
pcaCM = ClassifierMeasurements[digitCF, 
      Thread[(Binarize[#, 0.55] &@*ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@ denoisedImages) -> testImageLabels]]
    
nnmfCM = ClassifierMeasurements[digitCF, 
      Thread[(Binarize[#, 0.55] &@*ImageAdjust@*ColorNegate /@  denoisedImagesNNMF) -> testImageLabels]]

Tabulate the classification measurements results:

Grid[{{"Original", "PCA", "NNMF"},
{Row[{"Accuracy:", origCM["Accuracy"]}], Row[{"Accuracy:", pcaCM["Accuracy"]}], Row[{"Accuracy:", nnmfCM["Accuracy"]}]},
{origCM["ConfusionMatrixPlot"], pcaCM["ConfusionMatrixPlot"], nnmfCM["ConfusionMatrixPlot"]}}, 
Dividers -> {None, {True, True, False}}]

Statistical thesaurus from NPR podcasts

Five months ago I worked with transcripts of National Public Radio (NPR) podcasts. The transcripts are available at http://www.npr.org — see for example “From child actor to artist…“.

Using nearly 5000 transcripts I experimented with topic extraction and statistical thesaurus derivation. The topics are too bulky to show here, but I am going to show some of the statistical thesaurus entries.

I used dimension reduction with Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF). For more detailed explanations, code for computations, and experimental results see this paper “Topic and thesaurus extraction from a document collection” provided by the MathematicaForPrediction project at GitHub. (The code for NNMF is also provided by the MathematicaForPrediction project at GitHub.)

First let me describe the data. The collection has 5123 transcripts.

Here is a sample of the transcripts (only the first 400 characters of each are taken):

Here is the distribution of the string lengths of the transcripts:

I removed custom selected stop words from the transcripts. I also stemmed the words using the stemmer called snowball, see http://snowball.tartarus.org. The stemmed words are called “terms” below.

Here are descriptive statistics and the distribution of the number of transcripts per term:

Here are descriptive statistics and the distribution of the number of terms per transcript:

I did not compute the whole statistical thesaurus. Instead I made a function that computes the thesaurus entry of a given word using the right NNMF factor with proper normalization.

Here are sample results of the thesaurus entry “retrieval” (note that the right column contains word stems):

Classification of handwritten digits

In this blog post I show some experiments with algorithmic recognition of images of handwritten digits.

I followed the algorithm described in Chapter 10 of the book “Matrix Methods in Data Mining and Pattern Recognition” by Lars Elden.

The algorithm described uses the so called thin Singular Value Decomposition (SVD).

1. Training phase
   1.1. Rasterize each training image into an array of 16 x 16 pixels.
   1.2. Each raster image is linearized — the rows are aligned into a one dimensional array. In other words, each raster image is mapped into a R^256 vector space. We will call these one dimensional arrays raster vectors.
   1.3. From each set of images corresponding to a digit make a matrix with 256 columns of the corresponding raster vectors.
   1.4. Using the matrices in step 1.3 use thin SVD to derive orthogonal bases that describe the image data for each digit.

2. Recognition phase
   2.1. Given an image of an unknown digit derive its raster vector, R.
   2.2. Find the residuals of the approximations of R with each of the bases found in 1.4.
   2.3. The digit with the minimal residual is the recognition result.

The algorithm is programmed very easily with Mathematica. I did some experiments using training and test digit drawings made with the iPad app Zen Brush. I applied both the SVD recognition algorithm described above and I also applied decision trees in the same way as described in the previous blog post.

Here is a table of the training images:

And here is table of the test images:

Note that the third row is with images drawn with a thinner brush, and the fourth row is with images drawn with a thicker brush.

Here are raster images of the top row of the test drawings:

Here are several plots showing raster vectors:

      

As I mentioned earlier, raster vectors are very similar to the wave samples described in the previous blog post, so we can apply decision trees to them.

The SVD algorithm misclassified only 3 images out of 36 test digit images, success ratio 92%. Here is a table with digit drawings and list plots of the residuals:

It is interesting to look at the residuals obtained for different recognition instances. For example, the plot on the first row and first column for the recognition of a drawing of “2”  shows that the residual corresponding to 2 is the smallest and the residual for 8 is the next smallest one. The residual for 2 is the clear outlier. On the second row and third column we can see that a drawing of “4” has been classified correctly as 4, but the residual for 9 is very close to the residual for 4, we almost had a misclassification. We can see that for the other three test images with “4” the residuals for 4 are clearly separated from the rest, which can be explained with “4” being drawn more slanted, and its angle being more pronounced. Examining the misclassifications in similar way explains why they occurred.

Here are the misclassified images:

Note the misclassified image of 7 is quite different from the training images for 7.

The decision tree misclassified 42% of the images and here is are table of them:

Note that the decision trees would probably perform better if larger training data is used, not just nine drawings per digit. I also experimented with building the classifiers over the “negative” images and aligning the columns of the raster images instead of aligning the rows. The classification results were not better.

Some  details about the image preprocessing follow.

As I said, I drew the images using the Zen Brush app. For each digit I drew nine instances on Zen Brush’ canvas and exported to an image — here is an example:

Then I used Mathematica‘s function ImagePartition to partition the image into 9 singe digit drawings, and then applied ImageCrop to all them. Of course the same procedure is done for the testing images.

Further developments

Further developments with the MNIST data set are described and discussed in the blog post “Handwritten digits recognition by matrix factorization” and the forum discussion “[Mathematica-vs-R] Handwritten digits recognition by matrix factorization”.