Dual Regularized Optimal Transport

Abstract: In this paper, we present a new formulation of unbalanced optimal transport called Dual Regularized Optimal Transport (DROT). We argue that regularizing the dual formulation of optimal transport results in a version of unbalanced optimal transport that leads to sparse solutions and that gives us control over mass creation and destruction. We build intuition behind such control and present theoretical properties of the solutions to DROT. We demonstrate that due to recent advances in optimization techniques, we can feasibly solve such a formulation at large scales and present extensive experimental evidence for this formulation and its solution.