  In the domain of pattern recognition, using the CovDs (Covariance
Descriptors) to represent data and taking the metrics of the resulting
Riemannian manifold into account have been widely adopted for the task of image
set classification. Recently, it has been proven that infinite-dimensional
CovDs are more discriminative than their low-dimensional counterparts. However,
the form of infinite-dimensional CovDs is implicit and the computational load
is high. We propose a novel framework for representing image sets by
approximating infinite-dimensional CovDs in the paradigm of the Nystr\"om
method based on a Riemannian kernel. We start by modeling the images via CovDs,
which lie on the Riemannian manifold spanned by SPD (Symmetric Positive
Definite) matrices. We then extend the Nystr\"om method to the SPD manifold and
obtain the approximations of CovDs in RKHS (Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space).
Finally, we approximate infinite-dimensional CovDs via these approximations.
Empirically, we apply our framework to the task of image set classification.
The experimental results obtained on three benchmark datasets show that our
proposed approximate infinite-dimensional CovDs outperform the original CovDs.
