A linear discriminant analysis framework based on random subspace for face recognition

Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) often suffers from the small sample size problem when dealing with high dimensional face data. Random subspace can effectively solve this problem by random sampling on face features. However, it remains a problem how to construct an optimal random subspace for discriminant analysis and perform the most efficient discriminant analysis on the constructed random subspace. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, Random Discriminant Analysis (RDA), to handle this problem. Under the most suitable situation of the principal subspace, the optimal reduced dimension of the face sample is discovered to construct a random subspace where all the discriminative information in the face space is distributed in the two principal subspaces of the within-class and between-class matrices. Then we apply Fisherface and Direct LDA respectively to the two principal subspaces for simultaneous discriminant analysis. The two sets of discriminant analysis features from dual principal subspaces are first combined at the feature level, and then all the random subspaces are further integrated at the decision level. With the discriminating information fusion at the two levels, our method can take full advantage of useful discriminant information in the face space. Extensive experiments on different face databases demonstrate its performance. Key Word: LDA, Random Subspace, Principal Subspace