Data-Driven Fuzzy Transform

The Fuzzy transform is applied mainly to 1-D signals and 2-D data organized as a regular grid (e.g., 2-D images), thus, limiting its potential application to arbitrary data in terms of dimensionality and structure. This article defines and analyzes the properties of the data-driven F-transform, with a focus on the construction of the class of data-driven membership functions, which are multiscale, local, linearly independent, intrinsic, and robust to data discretization. Data-driven membership functions are defined by applying a 1-D filter to the Laplace–Beltrami operator, which encodes the geometric and topological properties of the input data. Then, we address the efficient computation of the data-driven F-transform through a polynomial or a rational polynomial approximation of the input filter. In this way, the computation of the data-driven F-transform is independent of the evaluation of the membership functions at any point of the input domain and reduces to the solution of a small set of sparse and symmetric linear systems. Finally, the data-driven F-transform is efficiently evaluated on large and arbitrary data, in terms of dimensionality, structure, and size.