EM Optimization of Latent-Variable Density Models

There is currently considerable interest in developing general nonlinear density models based on latent, or hidden, variables. Such models have the ability to discover the presence of a relatively small number of underlying 'causes' which, acting in combination, give rise to the apparent complexity of the observed data set. Unfortunately, to train such models generally requires large computational effort. In this paper we introduce a novel latent variable algorithm which retains the general non-linear capabilities of previous models but which uses a training procedure based on the EM algorithm. We demonstrate the performance of the model on a toy problem and on data from flow diagnostics for a multi-phase oil pipeline.