Multiple eigenspaces by MDL

We propose an approach to constructing multiple eigenspaces from a set of training images based on the minimum description length (MDL) principle. The main idea is to systematically build a redundant set of eigenspaces, which are treated as hypotheses that are then subject to a selection procedure. The selection procedure, based on the MDL principle, selects the final resulting set of eigenspaces as an optimal representation of the training set. We have tested the proposed method on a number of standard image sets, and the significance of the approach with respect to the recognition rate has been clearly demonstrated.