Leveraging Graph Convolutional Networks for Semi-supervised Learning in Multi-view Non-graph Data

Abstract Semi-supervised learning with a graph-based approach has gained prominence in machine learning, particularly in scenarios where labeling data involves substantial costs. Graph convolution networks (GCNs) have found widespread application in semi-supervised learning, predominantly on graph-structured data such as citation and social networks. However, a noticeable gap exists in the application of these methods to non-graph multi-view data, such as collections of images. In an effort to address this gap, we introduce two innovative deep semi-supervised multi-view classification models specifically tailored for non-graph data. Both models share a common architecture, leveraging GCNs and integrating a label smoothing constraint. The primary distinction lies in the construction of the consensus similarity graph. The first model directly reconstructs the consensus graph from different views using a specialized objective function designed for flexible graph-based semi-supervised classification. In contrast, the second model independently reconstructs individual graphs and subsequently adaptively merges them into a unified consensus graph. Our experiments encompass various multiple-view image datasets. The results consistently demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed approach compared to traditional fusion methods with GCNs. In this research, we present two approaches for tackling semi-supervised classification challenges involving multiple views. One method is named Semi-supervised Classification with a Unified Graph (SCUG), and the other is referred to as Semi-supervised Classification with a Fused Graph (SC-Fused). Both methods share a common semi-supervised classification process, utilizing the GCN framework and incorporating label smoothing. However, the key distinction lies in the construction of the similarity graph. Unlike traditional ad hoc graph construction approaches, our proposed methods, SCUG and SC-Fused, estimate the unified graph or individual graphs, respectively, alongside the labels. This results in more optimized graphs that benefit from data smoothing and the semi-supervised context.