Loss-weighted decoding for error-correcting output coding

The multi-class classification is a challenging problem for several applications in Computer Vision. Error Correcting Output Codes technique (ECOC) represents a general framework capable to extend any binary classification process to the multi-class case. In this work, we present a novel decoding strategy that takes advantage of the ECOC coding to outperform the up to now existing decoding strategies. The novel decoding strategy is applied to the state-of-the-art coding designs, extensively tested on the UCI Machine Learning repository database and in two real vision applications: tissue characterization in medical images and traffic sign categorization. The results show that the presented methodology considerably increases the performance of the traditional ECOC strategies and the state-of-the-art multi-classifiers.