Patent ID: 7412425

Claim:
A computer based method for learning a label of an unlabelled data point representing an image of a first physical object from a plurality of data points representing images of physical objects, the method comprising: determining relative distances between all data points in the plurality of data points; determining a set of neighboring data points with respect to the unlabelled data point, the set of neighboring data points not including all data points in the plurality of data points; performing an eigen decomposition of a matrix of distances between each element of the set of neighboring data points to determine a function, wherein the matrix of distances consists only of distances between each element of the set of neighboring data points; determining a first label based on a result from evaluating the function with respect to the unlabelled data point; storing on a computer readable medium an association between the unlabelled data point and the determined first label; and performing image classification using the determined first label to classify the first physical object.