  Nonnegative Matrix Factorization consists in (approximately) factorizing a
nonnegative data matrix by the product of two low-rank nonnegative matrices. It
has been successfully applied as a data analysis technique in numerous domains,
e.g., text mining, image processing, microarray data analysis, collaborative
filtering, etc.
  We introduce a novel approach to solve NMF problems, based on the use of an
underapproximation technique, and show its effectiveness to obtain sparse
solutions. This approach, based on Lagrangian relaxation, allows the resolution
of NMF problems in a recursive fashion. We also prove that the
underapproximation problem is NP-hard for any fixed factorization rank, using a
reduction of the maximum edge biclique problem in bipartite graphs.
  We test two variants of our underapproximation approach on several standard
image datasets and show that they provide sparse part-based representations
with low reconstruction error. Our results are comparable and sometimes
superior to those obtained by two standard Sparse Nonnegative Matrix
Factorization techniques.
