Hierarchical Quadratic Random Forest Classifier

Abstract: In this paper, we proposed a hierarchical quadratic random forest classifier for classifying multiresolution samples extracted from multichannel data. This forest incorporated a penalized multivariate linear discriminant in each of its decision nodes and processed squared features to realize quadratic decision boundaries in the original feature space. The penalized discriminant was based on a multiclass sparse discriminant analysis and the penalization was based on a group Lasso regularizer which was an intermediate between the Lasso and the ridge regularizer. The classification probabilities estimated by this forest and the features learned by its decision nodes could be used standalone or foster graph-based classifiers.