Handwritten Digit Recognition by a Mixture of Local Principal Component Analysis

Mixture of local principal component analysis (PCA) has attracted attention due to a number of benefits over global PCA. The performance of a mixture model usually depends on the data partition and local linear fitting. In this paper, we propose a mixture model which has the properties of optimal data partition and robust local fitting. Data partition is realized by a soft competition algorithm called neural 'gas' and robust local linear fitting is approached by a nonlinear extension of PCA learning algorithm. Based on this mixture model, we describe a modular classification scheme for handwritten digit recognition, in which each module or network models the manifold of one of ten digit classes. Experiments demonstrate a very high recognition rate.