A discriminant analysis using composite features for classification problems

In this paper, we propose a new discriminant analysis using composite features for pattern classification. A composite feature consists of a number of primitive features, each of which corresponds to an input variable. The covariance of composite features is obtained from the inner product of composite features and can be considered as a generalized form of the covariance of primitive features. It contains information on statistical dependency among multiple primitive features. A discriminant analysis (C-LDA) using the covariance of composite features is a generalization of the linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Unlike LDA, the number of extracted features can be larger than the number of classes in C-LDA, which is a desirable property especially for binary classification problems. Experimental results on several data sets indicate that C-LDA provides better classification results than other methods based on primitive features.