Patent ID: 7720289

Claim:
A computer implemented method for constructing descriptors for a set of data samples, comprising a computer for performing steps of the method, comprising the steps of: selecting multiple subsets of samples from a set of data samples; extracting a d-dimensional feature vector for each sample in each subset of samples, in which the feature vector includes indices to the corresponding sample and properties of the sample; combining the feature vectors of each subset of samples into a d×d dimensional covariance matrix, the covariance matrix being a descriptor of the corresponding subset of samples; and determining a distance score between a pair of covariance matrices to measure a similarity of the corresponding subsets of samples; defining a covariance distance metric; determining pair-wise distance scores between pairs of the covariance matrices; constructing a d×d dimensional auto-distance matrix from the pair-wise distance scores; and assigning the auto-distance matrix as the descriptor of the set of data samples.