ELastic MAPs


elmap - is a tool for fast constructing non-linear principal surfaces with different topologies in multidimensional as well as in low-dimensional spaces, for discrete sets of weightened points.
keywords: principal curve, principal surface, probabilistic, dimensionality reduction, nonlinear manifold, generative topographic mapping

Description

Principal curves and surfaces are nonlinear generalizations of principal components and subspaces, respectively. They can provide insightful summary of high-dimensional data not typically attainable by classical linear methods. They were first defined by Trevor Hastie and Werner Stuetzle as "self-consistent" smooth curves which pass through the "middle" of a d-dimensional probability distribution or data cloud. Good biobliography on the subject is available at http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~kegl/research/pcurves/ .

We present a novel algorithm to construct principal surfaces using methaphor of elasticity. The picture on the right symbolizes the idea behind the algorithm. The small points are datapoints, the big ones are a grid approximation of a principal curve. We define an elastic energy of such system and propose an effective algorithm to minimize it.

The methodology of principal curves and surfaces construction that we propose has several advantages: 1) it is "natural"; 2) it is fast; 3) it is flexible and allows many variations and adaptations; 4) it allows easily constructing surfaces with any dimension and topology.


Examples

1) Contours extraction

2) Complex surface modelling

3) Multidimensional data visualization

PCA View                                              View on the non-linear manifold


References

  1. Andrei Zinovyev. Method And Software For Fast Construction Of Principal Manifolds Approximations. (PDF)
  2. Alexander Gorban, Andrei Zinovyev. Visualization of Data by Method of Elastic Maps and Its Applications in Genomics, Economics and Sociology. (PDF)
  3. Alexander Gorban, Andrei Zinovyev and Donald Wunsch. Application of the method of elastic maps in analysis of genetic texts. (PDF)

Implementation

For the moment the elastic maps algorithm has two implementations:

1) as a stand-alone full-featured tool VidaExpert fot multidimensional data visualization.

2) as a C++ package for fast construction of fine grid approximations to principal surfaces.


Downloads

Binaries:

The sources are available upon request.


Contact

Andrei Zinovyev