Learning with box kernels

Supervised examples and prior knowledge on regions of the input space have been profitably integrated in kernel machines to improve the performance of classifiers in different real-world contexts. The proposed solutions, which rely on the unified supervision of points and sets, have been mostly based on specific optimization schemes in which, as usual, the kernel function operates on points only. In this paper, arguments from variational calculus are used to support the choice of a special class of kernels, referred to as box kernels, which emerges directly from the choice of the kernel function associated with a regularization operator. It is proven that there is no need to search for kernels to incorporate the structure deriving from the supervision of regions of the input space, because the optimal kernel arises as a consequence of the chosen regularization operator. Although most of the given results hold for sets, we focus attention on boxes, whose labeling is associated with their propositional description. Based on different assumptions, some representer theorems are given that dictate the structure of the solution in terms of box kernel expansion. Successful results are given for problems of medical diagnosis, image, and text categorization.