Automated novelty detection in the WISE survey with one-class support
  vector machines
  Wide-angle photometric surveys of previously uncharted sky areas or
wavelength regimes will always bring in unexpected sources whose existence and
properties cannot be easily predicted from earlier observations: novelties or
even anomalies. Such objects can be efficiently sought for with novelty
detection algorithms. Here we present an application of such a method, called
one-class support vector machines (OCSVM), to search for anomalous patterns
among sources preselected from the mid-infrared AllWISE catalogue covering the
whole sky. To create a model of expected data we train the algorithm on a set
of objects with spectroscopic identifications from the SDSS DR13 database,
present also in AllWISE. OCSVM detects as anomalous those sources whose
patterns - WISE photometric measurements in this case - are inconsistent with
the model. Among the detected anomalies we find artefacts, such as objects with
spurious photometry due to blending, but most importantly also real sources of
genuine astrophysical interest. Among the latter, OCSVM has identified a sample
of heavily reddened AGN/quasar candidates distributed uniformly over the sky
and in a large part absent from other WISE-based AGN catalogues. It also
allowed us to find a specific group of sources of mixed types, mostly stars and
compact galaxies. By combining the semi-supervised OCSVM algorithm with
standard classification methods it will be possible to improve the latter by
accounting for sources which are not present in the training sample but are
otherwise well-represented in the target set. Anomaly detection adds
flexibility to automated source separation procedures and helps verify the
reliability and representativeness of the training samples. It should be thus
considered as an essential step in supervised classification schemes to ensure
completeness and purity of produced catalogues.
