Rate-Distortion Bounds for Kernel-Based Distortion Measures

Kernel methods have been used for turning linear learning algorithms into nonlinear ones. These nonlinear algorithms measure distances between data points by the distance in the kernel-induced feature space. In lossy data compression, the optimal tradeoff between the number of quantized points and the incurred distortion is characterized by the rate-distortion function. However, the rate-distortion functions associated with distortion measures involving kernel feature mapping have yet to be analyzed. We consider two reconstruction schemes, reconstruction in input space and reconstruction in feature space, and provide bounds to the rate-distortion functions for these schemes. Comparison of the derived bounds to the quantizer performance obtained by the kernel K-means method suggests that the rate-distortion bounds for input space and feature space reconstructions are informative at low and high distortion levels, respectively.