Towards unique solutions of non-negative matrix factorization problems by a determinant criterion

We propose a determinant criterion to constrain the solutions of non-negative matrix factorization problems and achieve unique and optimal solutions in a general setting, provided an exact solution exists. We demonstrate how optimal solutions are obtained by a heuristic named detNMF in an illustrative example and discuss the difference to sparsity constraints. Furthermore, an intuitive explanation of multi-layer techniques is discussed also.