Robust probabilistic PCA with missing data and contribution analysis for outlier detection

Principal component analysis (PCA) is a widely adopted multivariate data analysis technique, with interpretation being established on the basis of both classical linear projection and a probability model (i.e. probabilistic PCA (PPCA)). Recently robust PPCA models, by using the multivariate t-distribution, have been proposed to consider the situation where there may be outliers within the data set. This paper presents an overview of the robust PPCA technique, and further discusses the issue of missing data. An expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm is presented for the maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters in the presence of missing data. When applying robust PPCA for outlier detection, a contribution analysis method is proposed to identify which variables contribute the most to the occurrence of outliers, providing valuable information regarding the source of outlying data. The proposed technique is demonstrated on numerical examples, and the application to outlier detection and diagnosis in an industrial fermentation process.