OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Automatic symbolic computation for discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods
Venue: arXiv cs.NA 2018
Year: 2018

The implementation of discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods (DGFEMs) represents a very challenging computational task, particularly for systems of coupled nonlinear PDEs, including multiphysics problems, whose parameters may consist of power series or functionals of the solution variables. Thereby, the exploitation of symbolic algebra to express a given DGFEM approximation of a PDE problem within a high level language, whose syntax closely resembles the mathematical definition, is an invaluable tool. Indeed, this then facilitates the automatic assembly of the resulting system of (nonlinear) equations, as well as the computation of Fréchet derivative(s) of the DGFEM scheme, needed, for example, within a Newton-type solver. However, even exploiting symbolic algebra, the discretisation of coupled systems of PDEs can still be extremely verbose and hard to debug. Thereby, in this article we develop a further layer of abstraction by designing a class structure for the automatic computation of DGFEM formulations. This work has been implemented within the FEniCS package, based on exploiting the Unified Form Language. Numerical examples are presented which highlight the simplicity of implementation of DGFEMs for the numerical approximation of a range of PDE problems.
Cross-Domain Image Matching with Deep Feature Maps
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

We investigate the problem of automatically determining what type of shoe left an impression found at a crime scene. This recognition problem is made difficult by the variability in types of crime scene evidence (ranging from traces of dust or oil on hard surfaces to impressions made in soil) and the lack of comprehensive databases of shoe outsole tread patterns. We find that mid-level features extracted by pre-trained convolutional neural nets are surprisingly effective descriptors for this specialized domains. However, the choice of similarity measure for matching exemplars to a query image is essential to good performance. For matching multi-channel deep features, we propose the use of multi-channel normalized cross-correlation and analyze its effectiveness. Our proposed metric significantly improves performance in matching crime scene shoeprints to laboratory test impressions. We also show its effectiveness in other cross-domain image retrieval problems: matching facade images to segmentation labels and aerial photos to map images. Finally, we introduce a discriminatively trained variant and fine-tune our system through our proposed metric, obtaining state-of-the-art performance.
Higher-Order Nonlinear Complementary Filtering on Lie Groups
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2018
Year: 2018

Nonlinear observer design for systems whose state space evolves on Lie groups is considered. The proposed method is similar to previously developed nonlinear observers in that it involves propagating the state estimate using a process model and corrects the propagated state estimate using an innovation term on the tangent space of the Lie group. In the proposed method, the innovation term is constructed by passing the gradient of an invariant cost function, resolved in a basis of the tangent space, through a linear time-invariant system. The introduction of the linear system completes the extension of linear complementary filters to nonlinear Lie group observers by allowing higher-order filtering. In practice, the proposed method allows for greater design freedom and, with the appropriate selection of the linear filter, the ability to filter bias and noise over specific bandwidths. A disturbance observer that accounts for constant and harmonic disturbances in group velocity measurements is also considered. Local asymptotic stability about the desired equilibrium point is demonstrated. A numerical example that demonstrates the desirable properties of the observer is presented in the context of pose estimation.
Predictive Process Monitoring Methods: Which One Suits Me Best?
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2018
Year: 2018

Predictive process monitoring has recently gained traction in academia and is maturing also in companies. However, with the growing body of research, it might be daunting for companies to navigate in this domain in order to find, provided certain data, what can be predicted and what methods to use. The main objective of this paper is developing a value-driven framework for classifying existing work on predictive process monitoring. This objective is achieved by systematically identifying, categorizing, and analyzing existing approaches for predictive process monitoring. The review is then used to develop a value-driven framework that can support organizations to navigate in the predictive process monitoring field and help them to find value and exploit the opportunities enabled by these analysis techniques.
Continuously Constructive Deep Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2018
Year: 2018

Traditionally, deep learning algorithms update the network weights whereas the network architecture is chosen manually, using a process of trial and error. In this work, we propose two novel approaches that automatically update the network structure while also learning its weights. The novelty of our approach lies in our parameterization where the depth, or additional complexity, is encapsulated continuously in the parameter space through control parameters that add additional complexity. We propose two methods: In tunnel networks, this selection is done at the level of a hidden unit, and in budding perceptrons, this is done at the level of a network layer; updating this control parameter introduces either another hidden unit or another hidden layer. We show the effectiveness of our methods on the synthetic two-spirals data and on two real data sets of MNIST and MIRFLICKR, where we see that our proposed methods, with the same set of hyperparameters, can correctly adjust the network complexity to the task complexity.
Incentivizing the Dissemination of Truth Versus Fake News in Social Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2018
Year: 2018

The concept of truth, as a public good is the production of a collective understanding, which emerges from a complex network of social interactions. The recent impact of social networks on shaping the perception of truth in political arena shows how such perception is corroborated and established by the online users, collectively. However, investigative journalism for discovering truth is a costly option, given the vast spectrum of online information. In some cases, both journalist and online users choose not to investigate the authenticity of the news they receive, because they assume other actors of the network had carried the cost of validation. Therefore, the new phenomenon of "fake news" has emerged within the context of social networks. The online social networks, similarly to System of Systems, cause emergent properties, which makes authentication processes difficult, given availability of multiple sources. In this study, we show how this conflict can be modeled as a volunteer's dilemma. We also show how the public contribution through news subscription (shared rewards) can impact the dominance of truth over fake news in the network.
CODEV: Automated Model Predictive Control Design and Formal Verification (Tool Paper)
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2018
Year: 2018

We present CODEV, a Matlab-based tool for verifying systems employing Model Predictive Control (MPC). The MPC solution is computed offline and modeled together with the physical system as a hybrid automaton, whose continuous dynamics may be nonlinear with a control solution that remains affine. While MPC is a widely used synthesis technique for constrained and optimal control in industry, our tool provides the first automated approach of analyzing these systems for rigorous guarantees of safety. This is achieved by implementing a simulation-based verification algorithm for nonlinear hybrid models, with extensions tailored to the structure of the MPC solution. Given a physical model and parameters for desired system behavior (i.e. performance and constraints), CODEV generates a control law and verifies the resulting system will robustly maintain constraints. We have applied CODEV successfully to a set of benchmark examples, which illuminates its potential to tackle more complex problems for which MPC is used.
POL-LWIR Vehicle Detection: Convolutional Neural Networks Meet Polarised Infrared Sensors
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

For vehicle autonomy, driver assistance and situational awareness, it is necessary to operate at day and night, and in all weather conditions. In particular, long wave infrared (LWIR) sensors that receive predominantly emitted radiation have the capability to operate at night as well as during the day. In this work, we employ a polarised LWIR (POL-LWIR) camera to acquire data from a mobile vehicle, to compare and contrast four different convolutional neural network (CNN) configurations to detect other vehicles in video sequences. We evaluate two distinct and promising approaches, two-stage detection (Faster-RCNN) and one-stage detection (SSD), in four different configurations. We also employ two different image decompositions: the first based on the polarisation ellipse and the second on the Stokes parameters themselves. To evaluate our approach, the experimental trials were quantified by mean average precision (mAP) and processing time, showing a clear trade-off between the two factors. For example, the best mAP result of 80.94% was achieved using Faster-RCNN, but at a frame rate of 6.4 fps. In contrast, MobileNet SSD achieved only 64.51% mAP, but at 53.4 fps.
Random Order Contention Resolution Schemes
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2018
Year: 2018

Contention resolution schemes have proven to be an incredibly powerful concept which allows to tackle a broad class of problems. The framework has been initially designed to handle submodular optimization under various types of constraints, that is, intersections of exchange systems (including matroids), knapsacks, and unsplittable flows on trees. Later on, it turned out that this framework perfectly extends to optimization under uncertainty, like stochastic probing and online selection problems, which further can be applied to mechanism design. We add to this line of work by showing how to create contention resolution schemes for intersection of matroids and knapsacks when we work in the random order setting. More precisely, we do know the whole universe of elements in advance, but they appear in an order given by a random permutation. Upon arrival we need to irrevocably decide whether to take an element or not. We bring a novel technique for analyzing procedures in the random order setting that is based on the martingale theory. This unified approach makes it easier to combine constraints, and we do not need to rely on the monotonicity of contention resolution schemes. Our paper fills the gaps, extends, and creates connections between many previous results and techniques. The main application of our framework is a $k+4+\varepsilon$ approximation ratio for the Bayesian multi-parameter unit-demand mechanism design under the constraint of $k$ matroids intersection, which improves upon the previous bounds of $4k-2$ and $e(k+1)$. Other results include improved approximation ratios for stochastic $k$-set packing and submodular stochastic probing over arbitrary non-negative submodular objective function, whereas previous results required the objective to be monotone.
Training Multi-organ Segmentation Networks with Sample Selection by Relaxed Upper Confident Bound
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs), especially fully convolutional networks, have been widely applied to automatic medical image segmentation problems, e.g., multi-organ segmentation. Existing CNN-based segmentation methods mainly focus on looking for increasingly powerful network architectures, but pay less attention to data sampling strategies for training networks more effectively. In this paper, we present a simple but effective sample selection method for training multi-organ segmentation networks. Sample selection exhibits an exploitation-exploration strategy, i.e., exploiting hard samples and exploring less frequently visited samples. Based on the fact that very hard samples might have annotation errors, we propose a new sample selection policy, named Relaxed Upper Confident Bound (RUCB). Compared with other sample selection policies, e.g., Upper Confident Bound (UCB), it exploits a range of hard samples rather than being stuck with a small set of very hard ones, which mitigates the influence of annotation errors during training. We apply this new sample selection policy to training a multi-organ segmentation network on a dataset containing 120 abdominal CT scans and show that it boosts segmentation performance significantly.
On Remote Estimation with Multiple Communication Channels
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2018
Year: 2018

This paper considers a sequential sensor scheduling and remote estimation problem with multiple communication channels. Departing from the classical remote estimation paradigm, which involves one communication channel (noiseless or noisy), we consider here the more realistic setting of two channels with different characteristics (one is cheap but noisy, the other one is costly but noiseless). We first show, via a counter-example, that the common folklore of applying symmetric threshold-based policy, which is well known to be optimal (for unimodal state densities) in the classical remote estimation problem, can no longer be optimal in our setting. In view of that, and in order to make the problem tractable, we introduce a side channel which signals to the receiver the sign of the underlying state. We show, under some technical assumptions, that a threshold-in-threshold based communication scheduling is optimal. The impact of the results is analyzed numerically based on dynamic programming. This numerical analysis reveals some rather surprising results inheriting known properties from the single channel settings, such as not exhausting all the opportunities available for the noisy channel.
Stackelberg Game for Distributed Time Scheduling in RF-Powered Backscatter Cognitive Radio Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2018
Year: 2018

In this paper, we study the transmission strategy adaptation problem in an RF-powered cognitive radio network, in which hybrid secondary users are able to switch between the harvest-then-transmit mode and the ambient backscatter mode for their communication with the secondary gateway. In the network, a monetary incentive is introduced for managing the interference caused by the secondary transmission with imperfect channel sensing. The sensing-pricing-transmitting process of the secondary gateway and the transmitters is modeled as a single-leader-multi-follower Stackelberg game. Furthermore, the follower sub-game among the secondary transmitters is modeled as a generalized Nash equilibrium problem with shared constraints. Based on our theoretical discoveries regarding the properties of equilibria in the follower sub-game and the Stackelberg game, we propose a distributed, iterative strategy searching scheme that guarantees the convergence to the Stackelberg equilibrium. The numerical simulations show that the proposed hybrid transmission scheme always outperforms the schemes with fixed transmission modes. Furthermore, the simulations reveal that the adopted hybrid scheme is able to achieve a higher throughput than the sum of the throughput obtained from the schemes with fixed transmission modes.
Connectivity of Underlay Cognitive Radio Networks with Directional Antennas
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2018
Year: 2018

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), the connectivity of secondary users (SUs) is difficult to be guaranteed due to the existence of primary users (PUs). Most prior studies only consider cognitive radio networks equipped with omni-directional antennas causing high interference at SUs. We name such CRNs with omni-directional antennas as Omn-CRNs. Compared with an omni-directional antenna, a directional antenna can concentrate the transmitting/receiving capability at a certain direction, consequently resulting in less interference. In this paper, we investigate the connectivity of SUs in CRNs with directional antennas (named as Dir-CRNs). In particular, we derive closed-form expressions of the connectivity of SUs of both Dir-CRNs and Omn-CRNs, thus enabling tractability. We show that the connectivity of SUs is mainly affected by two constraints: the spectrum availability of SUs and the topological connectivity of SUs. Extensive simulations validate the accuracy of our proposed models. Meanwhile, we also show that Dir-CRNs can have higher connectivity than Omn-CRNs mainly due to the lower interference, the higher spectrum availability and the higher topological connectivity brought by directional antennas.
Semi-fragile Tamper Detection and Recovery based on Region Categorization and Two-Sided Circular Block Dependency
Venue: arXiv cs.MM 2018
Year: 2018

This paper presents a new semi-fragile algorithm for image tamper detection and recovery, which is based on region attention and two-sided circular block dependency. This method categorizes the image blocks into three categories according to their texture. In this method, less information is extracted from areas with the smooth texture, and more information is extracted from areas with the rough texture. Also, the extracted information for each type of blocks is embedded in another block with the same type. So, changes in the smooth areas are invisible to Human Visual System. To increase the localization power a two-sided circular block dependency is proposed, which is able to distinguish partially destroyed blocks. Pairwise block dependency and circular block dependency, which are common methods in the block-based tamper detection, are not able to distinguish the partially destroyed blocks. Cubic interpolation is used in order to decrease the blocking effects in the recovery phase. The results of the proposed method for regions with different texture show that the proposed method is superior to non-region-attention based methods.
Path to Stochastic Stability: Comparative Analysis of Stochastic Learning Dynamics in Games
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2018
Year: 2018

Stochastic stability is a popular solution concept for stochastic learning dynamics in games. However, a critical limitation of this solution concept is its inability to distinguish between different learning rules that lead to the same steady-state behavior. We address this limitation for the first time and develop a framework for the comparative analysis of stochastic learning dynamics with different update rules but same steady-state behavior. We present the framework in the context of two learning dynamics: Log-Linear Learning (LLL) and Metropolis Learning (ML). Although both of these dynamics have the same stochastically stable states, LLL and ML correspond to different behavioral models for decision making. Moreover, we demonstrate through an example setup of sensor coverage game that for each of these dynamics, the paths to stochastically stable states exhibit distinctive behaviors. Therefore, we propose multiple criteria to analyze and quantify the differences in the short and medium run behavior of stochastic learning dynamics. We derive and compare upper bounds on the expected hitting time to the set of Nash equilibria for both LLL and ML. For the medium to long-run behavior, we identify a set of tools from the theory of perturbed Markov chains that result in a hierarchical decomposition of the state space into collections of states called cycles. We compare LLL and ML based on the proposed criteria and develop invaluable insights into the comparative behavior of the two dynamics.
Image Segmentation using Sparse Subset Selection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

In this paper, we present a new image segmentation method based on the concept of sparse subset selection. Starting with an over-segmentation, we adopt local spectral histogram features to encode the visual information of the small segments into high-dimensional vectors, called superpixel features. Then, the superpixel features are fed into a novel convex model which efficiently leverages the features to group the superpixels into a proper number of coherent regions. Our model automatically determines the optimal number of coherent regions and superpixels assignment to shape final segments. To solve our model, we propose a numerical algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), whose iterations consist of two highly parallelizable sub-problems. We show each sub-problem enjoys closed-form solution which makes the ADMM iterations computationally very efficient. Extensive experiments on benchmark image segmentation datasets demonstrate that our proposed method in combination with an over-segmentation can provide high quality and competitive results compared to the existing state-of-the-art methods.
Facial Aging and Rejuvenation by Conditional Multi-Adversarial Autoencoder with Ordinal Regression
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

Facial aging and facial rejuvenation analyze a given face photograph to predict a future look or estimate a past look of the person. To achieve this, it is critical to preserve human identity and the corresponding aging progression and regression with high accuracy. However, existing methods cannot simultaneously handle these two objectives well. We propose a novel generative adversarial network based approach, named the Conditional Multi-Adversarial AutoEncoder with Ordinal Regression (CMAAE-OR). It utilizes an age estimation technique to control the aging accuracy and takes a high-level feature representation to preserve personalized identity. Specifically, the face is first mapped to a latent vector through a convolutional encoder. The latent vector is then projected onto the face manifold conditional on the age through a deconvolutional generator. The latent vector preserves personalized face features and the age controls facial aging and rejuvenation. A discriminator and an ordinal regression are imposed on the encoder and the generator in tandem, making the generated face images to be more photorealistic while simultaneously exhibiting desirable aging effects. Besides, a high-level feature representation is utilized to preserve personalized identity of the generated face. Experiments on two benchmark datasets demonstrate appealing performance of the proposed method over the state-of-the-art.
Direct Estimation of Pharmacokinetic Parameters from DCE-MRI using Deep CNN with Forward Physical Model Loss
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2018
Year: 2018

Dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI is an evolving imaging technique that provides a quantitative measure of pharmacokinetic (PK) parameters in body tissues, in which series of T1-weighted images are collected following the administration of a paramagnetic contrast agent. Unfortunately, in many applications, conventional clinical DCE-MRI suffers from low spatiotemporal resolution and insufficient volume coverage. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning based approach to directly estimate the PK parameters from undersampled DCE-MRI data. Specifically, we design a custom loss function where we incorporate a forward physical model that relates the PK parameters to corrupted image-time series obtained due to subsampling in k-space. This allows the network to directly exploit the knowledge of true contrast agent kinetics in the training phase, and hence provide more accurate restoration of PK parameters. Experiments on clinical brain DCE datasets demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in terms of fidelity of PK parameter reconstruction and significantly faster parameter inference compared to a model-based iterative reconstruction method.