  State-of-the-art image-set matching techniques typically implicitly model
each image-set with a Gaussian distribution. Here, we propose to go beyond
these representations and model image-sets as probability distribution
functions (PDFs) using kernel density estimators. To compare and match
image-sets, we exploit Csiszar f-divergences, which bear strong connections to
the geodesic distance defined on the space of PDFs, i.e., the statistical
manifold. Furthermore, we introduce valid positive definite kernels on the
statistical manifolds, which let us make use of more powerful classification
schemes to match image-sets. Finally, we introduce a supervised dimensionality
reduction technique that learns a latent space where f-divergences reflect the
class labels of the data. Our experiments on diverse problems, such as
video-based face recognition and dynamic texture classification, evidence the
benefits of our approach over the state-of-the-art image-set matching methods.
