Learning Based Neural Similarity Metrics for Multimedia Data Mining
Multimedia data mining refers to pattern discovery, rule extraction and knowledge acquisition from multimedia database. Two typical tasks in multimedia data mining are of visual data classification and clustering in terms of semantics. Usually performance of such classification or clustering systems may not be favorable due to the use of low-level features for image representation, and also some improper similarity metrics for measuring the closeness between multimedia objects as well. This paper considers a problem of modeling similarity for semantic image clustering. A collection of semantic images and feed-forward neural networks are used to approximate a characteristic function of equivalence classes, which is termed as a learning pseudo metric (LPM). Empirical criteria on evaluating the goodness of the LPM are established. A LPM based k-Mean rule is then employed for the semantic image clustering practice, where two impurity indices, classification performance and robustness are used for performance evaluation. An artificial image database with 11 semantics is employed for our simulation studies. Results demonstrate the merits and usefulness of our proposed techniques for multimedia data mining.

title: Learning to Survive: Increased Learning Rates by Communication in a Multi-agent System
abstract: In a hostile multi-agent environment, a team of learning agents utilizing a reinforcement-learning paradigm may not learn at a sufficient rate for the agents to adapt and survive. If we can increase the learning rate of the individual agents, they may learn earlier to select more optimal actions and hence increase the chance of survival. Implementing a simple communication structure between the agents and allowing them to communicate their learning events with team members at each time step considerably increases the learning rate. This increased learning rate can significantly improve the team’s chances of survival in the agent’s environment, but alone is not a guarantee of better performance. The type of information communicated also plays a crucial role in determining increased survival chances. This paper reports on some experimental results from simulating two teams of combative agents, one utilizing reinforcement learning as a control paradigm using communication to increase the measured learning rate.

title: Protein Sequences Classification Using Modular RBF Neural Networks
abstract: A protein super-family consists of proteins which share amino acid sequence homology and which may therefore be functionally and structurally related. One of the benefits from this category grouping is that some hint of function may be deduced for individual members from information on other members of the family. Traditionally, two protein sequences are classified into the same class if they have high homology in terms of feature patterns extracted through sequence alignment algorithms. These algorithms compare an unseen protein sequence with all the identified protein sequences and returned the higher scored protein sequences. As the sizes of the protein sequence databases are very large, it is a very time consuming job to perform exhaustive comparison of existing protein sequence. Therefore, there is a need to build an improved classification system for effectively identifying protein sequences. This paper presents a modular neural classifier for protein sequences with improved classification criteria. The intelligent classification techniques described in this paper aims to enhance the performance of single neural classifiers based on a centralized information structure in terms of recognition rate, generalization and reliability. The architecture of the proposed model is a modular RBF neural network with a compensational combination at the transition output layer. The connection weights between the final output layer and the transition output layer are optimized by delta rule, which serve as an integrator of the local neural classifiers. To enhance the classification reliability, we present two heuristic rules to apply to decision-making. Two sets of protein sequences with ten classes of superfamilies downloaded from a public domain database, Protein Information Resources (PIR), are used in our simulation study. Experimental results with performance comparisons are carried out between single neural classifiers and the proposed modular neural classifier.

title: A Hybird Image Retrieval System with User's Relevance Feedback Using Neurocomputing
abstract: This paper aims at developing a hybrid scheme for intelligent image retrieval using neural nets. Each item in an image database is indexed by a visual feature vector, which is extracted using color moments and discrete cosine transform coefficients. Query is characterized by a set of semantic labels, which are predefined by system designers and associated with domain concerns. The proposed hybrid image retrieval (HIR) system utilizes the image content features as the system input, and the semantic labels as its output. To compensate the deficiency of semantics modelling, an on-line user’s relevance feedback is applied to improve the retrieval performance of the HIR system. The neural net acts like a pattern association memory bank that maps the low-level feature vectors to their corresponding semantic labels. During the retrieval process, the weights of the neural net are updated by an interactive user’s relevance feedback technique, where the feedback signal comprise the neural net actual output, semantic labels provided by users and the given query. A prototype HIR system is implemented and evaluated using an artificial image database. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed techniques are promising.

title: A structure-based approach for multimedia information filtering
abstract: While multimedia documents are sequentially presented to users, an information filtering (IF) system is useful to achieve a good retrieval performance in terms of both quality and efficiency. Conventional approaches for designing an IF system are based on the user's evaluation on information relevance degree (IRD), but ignore other attributes in system design such as relative importance of the data in a collection of multimedia documents. In this paper, we aim at developing a framework of designing structure-based multimedia IF systems, which incorporates the characteristics of the importance and relevance of multimedia documents. A method of calculating the values of relative importance degree of multimedia documents is proposed. Furthermore, these values are combined into the IRD of multimedia documents to improve the representation of user profiles. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the proposed techniques.

title: Hardware-software partitioning of real-time operating systems using Hopfield neural networks
abstract: The hardware–software automated partitioning of a real-time operating system in the system-on-a-chip (SoC-RTOS partitioning) is a NP-complete problem, and a crucial step in the hardware–software co-design of SoC. In this paper, a new model for SoC-RTOS partitioning is introduced, which can help in understanding the essence of the SoC-RTOS partitioning. A discrete Hopfield neural network approach for implementing the SoC-RTOS partitioning is proposed, where a novel energy function, operating equation and coefficients of the neural network are redefined. Simulations are carried out with comparison to other optimization techniques. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

title: A dynamically coupled neural oscillator network for image segmentation
abstract: We propose a dynamically coupled neural oscillator network for image segmentation. Instead of pair-wise coupling, an ensemble of oscillators coupled in a local region is used for grouping. We introduce a set of neighborhoods to generate dynamical coupling structures associated with a specific oscillator. Based on the proximity and similarity principles, two grouping rules are proposed to explicitly consider the distinct cases of whether an oscillator is inside a homogeneous image region or near a boundary between different regions. The use of dynamical coupling makes our segmentation network robust to noise on an image, and unlike image processing algorithms no iterative operation is needed for noise removal. For fast computation, a segmentation algorithm is abstracted from the underlying oscillatory dynamics, and has been applied to synthetic and real images. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our oscillator network in image segmentation.

title: Polynomial Systems from Certain Differential Equations
abstract: In this paper, combined elimination techniques are applied to establish relations among center conditions for certain cubic differential systems initially investigated by Kukles in 1944. The obtained relations clarify recent rediscoveries of some known conditions of Cherkas. The computational difficulties of establishing the complete center conditions for Kukles? system, a problem that is still open, are illustrated by interactive elimination. Some generated polynomial systems that need be solved are made available electronically for other developers to test elimination algorithms and their implementations.

title: Image segmentation using local spectral histograms
abstract: We propose a new algorithm for image segmentation. We use the spectral histogram, which is a vector consisting of marginal distributions of responses from chosen filters as a generic feature for texture as well as intensity images. Motivated by a new segmentation energy functional, we derive an iterative and deterministic approximation algorithm for segmentation. Based on the relationships between different scales and neighboring windows, we also develop an algorithm which can automatically detect homogeneous regions in an input image, which may consist of texture regions. To reduce the boundary uncertainty due to the large spatial window used for spectral histograms, we propose a novel local feature by building precise probability models based on current segmentation results. We have applied our algorithm to intensity, texture, and natural images and obtained good results with accurate texture boundaries.

title: Synchrony and Desynchrony in Integrate-and-Fire Oscillators
abstract: Due to many experimental reports of synchronous neural activity in the brain, there is much interest in understanding synchronization in networks of neural oscillators and its potential for computing perceptual organization. Contrary to Hopfield and Herz (1995), we find that networks of locally coupled integrate-and-fire oscillators can quickly synchronize. Furthermore, we examine the time needed to synchronize such networks. We observe that these networks synchronize at times proportional to the logarithm of their size, and we give the parameters used to control the rate of synchronization. Inspired by locally excitatory globally inhibitory oscillator network (LEGION) dynamics with relaxation oscillators (Terman & Wang, 1995), we find that global inhibition can play a similar role of desynchronization in a network of integrate-and-fire oscillators. We illustrate that a LEGION architecture with integrate-and-fire oscillators can be similarly used to address image analysis.

title: An oscillatory correlation model of human motion perception
abstract: An oscillatory correlation model of human motion perception is proposed based on the integration of motion and luminance information. The model is composed of two parallel pathways that segment the input scene based on motion and luminance, respectively. Combining these segmentations, the model refines the motion estimates in the integration stage to obtain the final segmentation in the motion pathway. For segmentation, LEGION (locally excitatory globally inhibitory oscillator network) is employed whereby the phases of oscillators are used for region labeling. The model performance is demonstrated using a set of psychophysical data.