We propose a fast population game dynamics, motivated by the analogy with infection and immunization processes within a population of “players,” for finding dominant sets, a powerful graph-theoretical notion of a cluster. Each step of the proposed dynamics is shown to have a linear time/space complexity and we show that, under the assumption of symmetric affinities, the average population payoff is strictly increasing along any non-constant trajectory, thereby allowing us to prove that dominant sets are asymptotically stable (i.e., attractive) points for the proposed dynamics. The approach is general and can be applied to a large class of quadratic optimization problems arising in computer vision. Experimentally, the proposed dynamics is found to be orders of magnitude faster than and as accurate as standard algorithms.
Citation
Technical Report TR-ISDS 2010-04, Univ. of Vienna