On earthmover distance, metric labeling, and 0-extension

We study the fundamental classification problems 0-Extension and Metric Labeling. A generalization of Multiway Cut, 0-Extension is closely related to partitioning problems in graph theory and to Lipschitz extensions in Banach spaces; its generalization Metric Labeling is motivated by applications in computer vision. Researchers had proposed using earthmover metrics to get polynomial time-solvable relaxations for these problems. A conjecture that has attracted much attention recently is that the integrality ratio for these relaxations is constant. We prove

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: STOC
• Authors: Howard J. Karloff, Subhash Khot, Aranyak Mehta, Yuval Rabani
• Keywords: Algorithms, Fundamental Classification Problems, Metric Labeling, Polynomial Time-solvable Relaxations, STOC 2006