One-Class Classification with Subgaussians

If a simple and fast solution for one-class classification is required, the most common approach is to assume a Gaussian distribution for the patterns of the single class. Bayesian classification then leads to a simple template matching. In this paper we show for two very different applications that the classification performance can be improved significantly if a more uniform subgaussian instead of a Gaussian class distribution is assumed. One application is face detection, the other is the detection of transcription factor binding sites on a genome. As for the Gaussian, the distance from a template, i.e., the distribution center, determines a pattern’s class assignment. However, depending on the distribution assumed, maximum likelihood learning leads to different templates from the training data. These new templates lead to significant improvements of the classification performance