Elastic Embedding through Graph Convolution-based Regression for Semi-supervised Classification

This article introduces a scheme for semi-supervised learning by estimating a flexible non-linear data representation that exploits Spectral Graph Convolutions structure. Structured data are exploited in order to determine non-linear and linear models. The introduced scheme takes advantage of data-driven graphs at two levels. First, it incorporates manifold smoothness that is naturally encoded by the graph itself. Second, the regression model is built on the convolved data samples that are derived from the data and their associated graph. The proposed semi-supervised embedding can tackle the problem of over-fitting on neighborhood structures for image data. The proposed Graph Convolution-based Semi-supervised Embedding paves the way to new theoretical and application perspectives related to the non-linear embedding. Indeed, building flexible models that adopt convolved data samples can enhance both the data representation and the final performance of the learning system. Several experiments are conducted on six image datasets for comparing the introduced scheme with some state-of-the-art semi-supervised approaches. This empirical evaluation shows the effectiveness of the proposed embedding scheme.