[R] Questions on Random Forest

[Liaw, Andy]

It's not clear to me what you want to do, but if I understand your problem
somewhat, I don't see how randomForest would be relevant.

Sounds like you are doing the following:

o  Read in a 512x512 image with pixel intensities.
o  You somehow fit a 3-component normal mixture model to the intensity data,
and have labels for which component the pixels belong to.
o  You want to be able to "fit" (or "predict") other images to the
3-component mixture model you have; i.e., create the "label" data given an
image.

If that's about right, I don't see why you would need some learning
algorithm such as randomForest.  You should be able to compute the
likelihood that a pixel belong to each of the 3 components in the mixture
model, based on the fitted parameters of that model.  The simplest I can
think of, ignoring the mixing proportions, is to simply compute the absolute
Z scores of a pixel with respect to the three components: z1 =
abs((x-u1)/sigma1), z2 = abs((x-u2)/sigma2), z2 = abs((x-u3)/sigma3), and
assign the pixel to the component with the largest absolute z-score.

HTH,
Andy

> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Fucang Jia
> 
> Hi, everyone,
> 
> I am a newbie on R. Now I want to do image pixel 
> classification by random 
> forest. But I has not a clear understanding on random forest. 
> Here is some 
> question:
> 
> As for an image, for example its size is 512x512 and has only 
> one variable 
> -- gray level. The histogram of the image looks like mixture 
> Gaussian Model, 
> say Gauss distribution (u1,sigma1), (u2,sigma2),(u3,sigma3). 
> And a image 
> classified by K-means or EM algorithm, so the class label 
> image is also 
> 512x512 and has 0, 1, 2 value.
> 
> I read the binary image data as follows:
> 
> datafile <- file("bone.img","rb")
> img <- readBin(datafile,size=2,what="integer",n=512*512,signed=FALSE)
> img <- as.matrix(img)
> close(datafile)
> 
> labelfile <- file(label.img","rb")
> label <- 
> readBin(labelfile,size=2,what="integer",n=512*512,signed=FALSE)
> label <- as.matrix(label)
> close(labelfile)
> 
> img_and_label <- c(img,label)  // binds the image data and class label
> img_and_label <- as.matrix(img_and_label)
> img_and_label <- array(img_and_label, dim=c(262144,2))
> 
> 
> Random Forest need a class label like "Species" in the  iris. 
> I do not know 
> how
> to set a class label like "Species" to the img.  So I run the 
> command as 
> follows:
> 
> set.seed(166)
> rf <- 
> randomForest(img_and_label[,2],data=image_and_label,importance=TRUE,
> proximity=TRUE)
> 
> which outputs:
> 
> Error in if (n == 0) stop("data (x) has 0 rows") :
>         argument is of length zero
> 
> Could anyone tell what is wrong and how can do the RF?
> 
> Secondly, if there is an new image , say img3 (dimension is 
> 512x512,too), 
> how can I
> use the former result to classifify the new image?
> 
> Thirdly, whether or not random forest be used well if there 
> is only one 
> variable, say pixel
> gray level, or three variables, such as red, green, blue 
> color component to 
> an true color
> image?
> 
> Thank you very much!
> 
> Best,
> 
> Fucang
> 
> ========================================
> Fucang Jia, Ph.D student
> Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
> Post.Box 2704
> Beijing, 100080
> P.R.China
> E-mail:fcjia at ict.ac.cn
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>