# Non Metric Space ( Approximate ) Library in R

#### Lampros Mouselimis

#### 2023-02-01

The nmslibR package is a wrapper of NMSLIB, which according to the authors “… is a similarity search library and a toolkit for evaluation of similarity search methods. The goal of the project is to create an effective and comprehensive toolkit for searching in generic non-metric spaces. Being comprehensive is important, because no single method is likely to be sufficient in all cases. Also note that exact solutions are hardly efficient in high dimensions and/or non-metric spaces. Hence, the main focus is on approximate methods”.

I’ve searched for some time (before wrapping NMSLIB) for a nearest neighbor library which can work with high dimensional data and can scale with big datasets. I’ve already written a package for k-nearest-neighbor search (KernelKnn), however, it’s based on brute force and unfortunately, it requires a certain computation time if the data consists of many rows. The nmslibR package, besides the main functionality of the NMSLIB python library, also includes an Approximate Kernel k-nearest function, which as I will show in the next lines is both fast and accurate. A comparison of NMSLIB with other popular approximate k-nearest-neighbor methods can be found here.

The NMSLIB Library,

- is a collection of search methods for generic spaces
- has both metric and non-metric search algorithms
- has both exact and approximate search algorithms
- is an evaluation toolkit that simplifies experimentation and processing of results
- is extensible (new spaces and methods can be added)
- It was designed to be efficient

Details can be found in the NMSLIB-manual.

#### The nmslibR package

The nmslibR package includes the following R6-class / functions,

##### class

NMSlib
Knn_Query()
knn_Query_Batch()
save_Index()

##### functions

UPDATE 10-05-2018 : Beginning from version 1.0.2 the dgCMatrix_2scipy_sparse function was renamed to TO_scipy_sparse and now accepts either a dgCMatrix or a dgRMatrix as input. The appropriate format for the nmslibR package in case of sparse matrices is the dgRMatrix format (scipy.sparse.csr_matrix)

KernelKnn_nmslib()

KernelKnnCV_nmslib()

TO_scipy_sparse()

mat_2scipy_sparse()

The package documentation includes details and examples for the R6-class and functions. I’ll start explaining how a user can work with sparse matrices as the input can also be a python sparse matrix.

#### Sparse matrices as input

The nmslibR package includes two functions (mat_2scipy_sparse and TO_scipy_sparse) which allow the user to convert from a matrix / sparse matrix (dgCMatrix, dgRMatrix) to a scipy sparse matrix (scipy.sparse.csc_matrix, scipy.sparse.csr_matrix),

    library(nmslibR)

    # conversion from a matrix object to a scipy sparse matrix
    #----------------------------------------------------------

    set.seed(1)

    x = matrix(runif(1000), nrow = 100, ncol = 10)

    x_sparse = mat_2scipy_sparse(x, format = "sparse_row_matrix")

    print(dim(x))

    [1] 100  10

    print(x_sparse$shape)

    (100, 10)

    # conversion from a dgCMatrix object to a scipy sparse matrix
    #-------------------------------------------------------------

    data = c(1, 0, 2, 0, 0, 3, 4, 5, 6)

    # 'dgCMatrix' sparse matrix
    #--------------------------

    dgcM = Matrix::Matrix(data = data, nrow = 3,

                          ncol = 3, byrow = TRUE,

                          sparse = TRUE)

    print(dim(dgcM))

    [1] 3 3

    x_sparse = TO_scipy_sparse(dgcM)

    print(x_sparse$shape)

    (3, 3)

    # 'dgRMatrix' sparse matrix
    #--------------------------

    dgrM = as(dgcM, "RsparseMatrix")

    class(dgrM)

    # [1] "dgRMatrix"
    # attr(,"package")
    # [1] "Matrix"

    print(dim(dgrM))

    [1] 3 3

    res_dgr = TO_scipy_sparse(dgrM)

    print(res_dgr$shape)

    (3, 3)

#### The NMSlib R6-class

The parameter settings for the NMSlib R6-class can be found in the Non-Metric Space Library (NMSLIB) Manual, which explains the NMSLIB Library in detail. In the following code chunk, I’ll show the functionality of the methods included using a data set from my Github repository (it appears as .ipynb notebook in the nmslib Github repository)

    library(nmslibR)

    # download the data from my Github repository (tested on a Linux OS)
    #-------------------------------------------------------------------

    system("wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlampros/DataSets/master/sift_10k.txt")

    # load the data in the R session
    #-------------------------------

    sift_10k = read.table("~/sift_10k.txt", quote="\"", comment.char="")

    # index parameters
    #-----------------

    M = 15
    efC = 100
    num_threads = 5

    index_params = list('M'= M, 'indexThreadQty' = num_threads, 'efConstruction' = efC,

                        'post' = 0, 'skip_optimized_index' = 1 )

    # query-time parameters
    #----------------------

    efS = 100

    query_time_params = list('efSearch' = efS)

    # Number of neighbors
    #--------------------

    K = 100

    # space to use
    #---------------

    space_name = 'l2sqr_sift'

    # initialize NMSlib [ the data should be a matrix ]
    #--------------------------------------------------

    init_nms = NMSlib$new(input_data = as.matrix(sift_10k), Index_Params = index_params,

                          Time_Params = query_time_params, space = space_name,

                          space_params = NULL, method = 'hnsw',

                          data_type = 'DENSE_UINT8_VECTOR', dtype = 'INT',

                          index_filepath = NULL, print_progress = FALSE)

    # returns a 1-dimensional vector
    #-------------------------------

    init_nms$Knn_Query(query_data_row = as.matrix(sift_10k[1, ]), k = 5)

    [[1]]
    [1]    2    6 4585 9256  140                    # indices

    [[2]]
    [1] 18724 24320 68158 69067 70321               # distances

    # returns knn's for all data
    #---------------------------

    all_dat = init_nms$knn_Query_Batch(as.matrix(sift_10k), k = 5, num_threads = 1)

    str(all_dat)

    # a list of indices and distances for all observations
    #------------------------------------------------------

    List of 2
     $ knn_idx : num [1:10000, 1:5] 3 4 1 2 13 14 1 2 30 31 ...
     $ knn_dist: num [1:10000, 1:5] 18724 14995 18724 14995 21038 ...

Details on the various methods and parameter settings can be found in the manual of the NMSLIB python Library.

#### KernelKnn using the nmslibR package

In the Vignette of the KernelKnn (Image classification of the MNIST and CIFAR-10 data using KernelKnn and HOG (histogram of oriented gradients)) package I experimented with the mnist dataset and a cross-validated kernel k-nearest-neighbors model gave 98.4 % accuracy based on HOG (histogram of oriented gradients) features. However, it took almost 30 minutes (depending on the system configuration) to complete using 6 threads. I’ve implemented a similar function using NMSLIB (KernelKnnCV_nmslib), so in the next code chunk I’ll use the same parameter setting and I’ll compare computation time and accuracy.

First load the data,

    # using system('wget..') on a linux OS

    system("wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlampros/DataSets/master/mnist.zip")

    mnist <- read.table(unz("mnist.zip", "mnist.csv"), nrows = 70000, header = T,

                        quote = "\"", sep = ",")

    X = mnist[, -ncol(mnist)]
    dim(X)

    ## [1] 70000   784

    # the 'KernelKnnCV_nmslib' function requires that the labels are numeric and start from 1 : Inf

    y = mnist[, ncol(mnist)] + 1
    table(y)

    ## y
    ##    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10
    ## 6903 7877 6990 7141 6824 6313 6876 7293 6825 6958

    # evaluation metric

    acc = function (y_true, preds) {

      out = table(y_true, max.col(preds, ties.method = "random"))

      acc = sum(diag(out))/sum(out)

      acc
    }

then compute the HOG features,

    library(OpenImageR)

    hog = HOG_apply(X, cells = 6, orientations = 9, rows = 28, columns = 28, threads = 6)

    ##
    ## time to complete : 2.101281 secs

    dim(hog)

    ## [1] 70000   324

then compute the approximate kernel k-nearest-neighbors using the cosine distance,

    # parameters for 'KernelKnnCV_nmslib'
    #------------------------------------

    M = 30
    efC = 100
    num_threads = 6

    index_params = list('M'= M, 'indexThreadQty' = num_threads, 'efConstruction' = efC,

                        'post' = 0, 'skip_optimized_index' = 1 )

    efS = 100

    query_time_params = list('efSearch' = efS)

    # approximate kernel knn
    #-----------------------

    fit_hog = KernelKnnCV_nmslib(hog, y, k = 20, folds = 4, h = 1,
                                 weights_function = 'biweight_tricube_MULT',
                                 Levels = sort(unique(y)), Index_Params = index_params,
                                 Time_Params = query_time_params, space = "cosinesimil",
                                 space_params = NULL, method = "hnsw", data_type = "DENSE_VECTOR",
                                 dtype = "FLOAT", index_filepath = NULL, print_progress = FALSE,
                                 num_threads = 6, seed_num = 1)

    # cross-validation starts ..

    # |=================================================================================| 100%

    # time to complete : 32.88805 secs

    str(fit_hog)

    List of 2
     $ preds:List of 4
      ..$ : num [1:17500, 1:10] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
      ..$ : num [1:17500, 1:10] 0 0 0 0 1 ...
      ..$ : num [1:17500, 1:10] 0 0 0 0 0 ...
      ..$ : num [1:17500, 1:10] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
     $ folds:List of 4
      ..$ fold_1: int [1:17500] 49808 21991 42918 7967 49782 28979 64440 49809 30522 36673 ...
      ..$ fold_2: int [1:17500] 51122 9469 58021 45228 2944 58052 65074 17709 2532 31262 ...
      ..$ fold_3: int [1:17500] 33205 40078 68177 32620 52721 18981 19417 53922 19102 67206 ...
      ..$ fold_4: int [1:17500] 28267 41652 28514 34525 68534 13294 48759 47521 69395 41408 ...

    acc_fit_hog = unlist(lapply(1:length(fit_hog$preds),

                                function(x) acc(y[fit_hog$folds[[x]]],

                                                fit_hog$preds[[x]])))
    acc_fit_hog

    ## [1] 0.9768000 0.9786857 0.9763429 0.9760000

    cat('mean accuracy for hog-features using cross-validation :', mean(acc_fit_hog), '\n')

    ## mean accuracy for hog-features using cross-validation : 0.9769571

It took approx. 33 seconds to return with an accuracy of 97.7 % . Almost 47 times faster than KernelKnn’s corresponding function (brute force) with a slight lower accuracy rate (the braycurtis distance metric might be better suited for this dataset).

I also run the corresponding brute-force algorithm of the NMSLIB Library by setting the method parameter to seq_search,

    # brute force of NMSLIB   [ here we set 'Index_Params' and 'Time_Params' to NULL ]
    #----------------------

    fit_hog_seq = KernelKnnCV_nmslib(hog, y, k = 20, folds = 4, h = 1,
                                    weights_function = 'biweight_tricube_MULT',
                                    Levels = sort(unique(y)), Index_Params = NULL,
                                    Time_Params = NULL, space = "cosinesimil",
                                    space_params = NULL, method = "seq_search",
                                    data_type = "DENSE_VECTOR", dtype = "FLOAT",
                                    index_filepath = NULL, print_progress = FALSE,
                                    num_threads = 6, seed_num = 1)

    # cross-validation starts ..

    # |=================================================================================| 100%

    # time to complete : 4.506177 mins

    acc_fit_hog_seq = unlist(lapply(1:length(fit_hog_seq$preds),

                                    function(x) acc(y[fit_hog_seq$folds[[x]]],

                                                    fit_hog_seq$preds[[x]])))
    acc_fit_hog_seq

    ## [1] 0.9785143 0.9802286 0.9783429 0.9784571

    cat('mean accuracy for hog-features using cross-validation :', mean(acc_fit_hog_seq), '\n')

    ## mean accuracy for hog-features using cross-validation : 0.9788857

The brute-force algorithm of the NMSLIB Library is almost 6 times faster than KernelKnn giving an accuracy of approx. 97.9 %.