[coeff, score] = princomp(X)
is the right thing to do, but knowing how to use it is a little tricky.
My understanding is that you did something like:
sift_image = sift_fun(img)
which gives you a binary image: sift_feature? (Even if not binary, this still works.)
Inputs, formulating X:
To use princomp
/pca
formulate X so that each column is a numel(sift_image)
x 1 vector
(i.e. sift_image(:)
)
Do this for all your images and line them up as columns in X.
So X will be numel(sift_image)
x num_images.
If your images aren't the same size (e.g. pixel dimensions different, more or less of a scene in the images), then you'll need to bring them into some common space, which is a whole different problem.
Unless your stuff is binary, you'll probably want to de-mean/normalize X, both in the column direction (i.e. normalizing each individual image) and row direction (de-meaning the whole dataset).
Outputs
score
is the set of eigen vectors: it will be num_pixels * num_images.
To get, say the first eigen vector back into an image shape, do:
first_component = reshape(score(:,1),size(im));
And so on for the rest of the components. There are as many components as input images.
Each row of coeff
is the num_images (equal to num_components) set of weights that can be applied to generate each input image. i.e.
input_image_1 = reshape(score * coeff(:,1) , size(original_im));
where input_image_1 is the correct, original shape
coeff(1,:) is a vector (num_images x 1)
score is pixels x num_images
(Disclaimer: I may have the columns/rows mixed up, but the descriptions are correct.)
Does that help?