pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Financial ticket intelligent recognition system based on deep learning
Authors: Fukang Tian, Haiyu Wu, Bo Xu
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning, Self-Learning

Facing the rapid growth in the issuance of financial tickets (or bills, invoices etc.), traditional manual invoice reimbursement and financial accounting system are imposing an increasing burden on financial accountants and consuming excessive manpower. To solve this problem, we proposes an iterative self-learning Framework of Financial Ticket intelligent Recognition System (FFTRS), which can support the fast iterative updating and extensibility of the algorithm model, which are the fundamental requirements for a practical financial accounting system. In addition, we designed a simple yet efficient Financial Ticket Faster Detection network (FTFDNet) and an intelligent data warehouse of financial ticket are designed to strengthen its efficiency and performance. At present, the system can recognize 194 kinds of financial tickets and has an automatic iterative optimization mechanism, which means, with the increase of application time, the types of tickets supported by the system will continue to increase, and the accuracy of recognition will continue to improve. Experimental results show that the average recognition accuracy of the system is 97.07%, and the average running time for a single ticket is 175.67ms. The practical value of the system has been tested in a commercial application, which makes a beneficial attempt for the deep learning technology in financial accounting work.
An automated and multi-parametric algorithm for objective analysis of meibography images
Authors: Peng Xiao, Zhongzhou Luo, Yuqing Deng, Gengyuan Wang, Jin Yuan
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Segmentation

Meibography is a non-contact imaging technique used by ophthalmologists to assist in the evaluation and diagnosis of meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD). While artificial qualitative analysis of meibography images could lead to low repeatability and efficiency and multi-parametric analysis is demanding to offer more comprehensive information in discovering subtle changes of meibomian glands during MGD progression, we developed an automated and multi-parametric algorithm for objective and quantitative analysis of meibography images. The full architecture of the algorithm can be divided into three steps: (1) segmentation of the tarsal conjunctiva area as the region of interest (ROI); (2) segmentation and identification of glands within the ROI; and (3) quantitative multi-parametric analysis including newly defined gland diameter deformation index (DI), gland tortuosity index (TI), and glands signal index (SI). To evaluate the performance of the automated algorithm, the similarity index (k) and the segmentation error including the false positive rate (r_P) and the false negative rate (r_N) are calculated between the manually defined ground truth and the automatic segmentations of both the ROI and meibomian glands of 15 typical meibography images. The feasibility of the algorithm is demonstrated in analyzing typical meibograhy images.
Sea-Net: Squeeze-And-Excitation Attention Net For Diabetic Retinopathy Grading
Authors: Ziyuan Zhao, Kartik Chopra, Zeng Zeng, XiaoLi Li
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Diabetic Retinopathy Grading, Diagnostic

Diabetes is one of the most common disease in individuals. \textit{Diabetic retinopathy} (DR) is a complication of diabetes, which could lead to blindness. Automatic DR grading based on retinal images provides a great diagnostic and prognostic value for treatment planning. However, the subtle differences among severity levels make it difficult to capture important features using conventional methods. To alleviate the problems, a new deep learning architecture for robust DR grading is proposed, referred to as SEA-Net, in which, spatial attention and channel attention are alternatively carried out and boosted with each other, improving the classification performance. In addition, a hybrid loss function is proposed to further maximize the inter-class distance and reduce the intra-class variability. Experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the proposed architecture.
Identifying safe intersection design through unsupervised feature extraction from satellite imagery
Authors: Jasper S. Wijnands, Haifeng Zhao, Kerry A. Nice, Jason Thompson, Katherine Scully, Jingqiu Guo, Mark Stevenson
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00

The World Health Organization has listed the design of safer intersections as a key intervention to reduce global road trauma. This article presents the first study to systematically analyze the design of all intersections in a large country, based on aerial imagery and deep learning. Approximately 900,000 satellite images were downloaded for all intersections in Australia and customized computer vision techniques emphasized the road infrastructure. A deep autoencoder extracted high-level features, including the intersection's type, size, shape, lane markings, and complexity, which were used to cluster similar designs. An Australian telematics data set linked infrastructure design to driving behaviors captured during 66 million kilometers of driving. This showed more frequent hard acceleration events (per vehicle) at four- than three-way intersections, relatively low hard deceleration frequencies at T-intersections, and consistently low average speeds on roundabouts. Overall, domain-specific feature extraction enabled the identification of infrastructure improvements that could result in safer driving behaviors, potentially reducing road trauma.
SAR-NAS: Skeleton-based Action Recognition via Neural Architecture Searching
Authors: Haoyuan Zhang, Yonghong Hou, Pichao Wang, Zihui Guo, Wanqing Li
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Action Recognition, Skeleton Based Action Recognition

This paper presents a study of automatic design of neural network architectures for skeleton-based action recognition. Specifically, we encode a skeleton-based action instance into a tensor and carefully define a set of operations to build two types of network cells: normal cells and reduction cells. The recently developed DARTS (Differentiable Architecture Search) is adopted to search for an effective network architecture that is built upon the two types of cells. All operations are 2D based in order to reduce the overall computation and search space. Experiments on the challenging NTU RGB+D and Kinectics datasets have verified that most of the networks developed to date for skeleton-based action recognition are likely not compact and efficient. The proposed method provides an approach to search for such a compact network that is able to achieve comparative or even better performance than the state-of-the-art methods.
Learning Sampling Distributions Using Local 3D Workspace Decompositions for Motion Planning in High Dimensions
Authors: Constantinos Chamzas, Zachary Kingston, Carlos Quintero-Peña, Anshumali Shrivastava, Lydia E. Kavraki
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Motion Planning

Earlier work has shown that reusing experience from prior motion planning problems can improve the efficiency of similar, future motion planning queries. However, for robots with many degrees-of-freedom, these methods exhibit poor generalization across different environments and often require large datasets that are impractical to gather. We present SPARK and FLAME , two experience-based frameworks for sampling-based planning applicable to complex manipulators in 3 D environments. Both combine samplers associated with features from a workspace decomposition into a global biased sampling distribution. SPARK decomposes the environment based on exact geometry while FLAME is more general, and uses an octree-based decomposition obtained from sensor data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of SPARK and FLAME on a Fetch robot tasked with challenging pick-and-place manipulation problems. Our approaches can be trained incrementally and significantly improve performance with only a handful of examples, generalizing better over diverse tasks and environments as compared to prior approaches.
Do Wide and Deep Networks Learn the Same Things? Uncovering How Neural Network Representations Vary with Width and Depth
Authors: Thao Nguyen, Maithra Raghu, Simon Kornblith
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Proceeding: ICLR 2021 1

A key factor in the success of deep neural networks is the ability to scale models to improve performance by varying the architecture depth and width. This simple property of neural network design has resulted in highly effective architectures for a variety of tasks. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding of effects of depth and width on the learned representations. In this paper, we study this fundamental question. We begin by investigating how varying depth and width affects model hidden representations, finding a characteristic block structure in the hidden representations of larger capacity (wider or deeper) models. We demonstrate that this block structure arises when model capacity is large relative to the size of the training set, and is indicative of the underlying layers preserving and propagating the dominant principal component of their representations. This discovery has important ramifications for features learned by different models, namely, representations outside the block structure are often similar across architectures with varying widths and depths, but the block structure is unique to each model. We analyze the output predictions of different model architectures, finding that even when the overall accuracy is similar, wide and deep models exhibit distinctive error patterns and variations across classes.
Multiple Sclerosis Severity Classification From Clinical Text
Authors: Alister D Costa, Stefan Denkovski, Michal Malyska, Sae Young Moon, Brandon Rufino, Zhen Yang, Taylor Killian, Marzyeh Ghassemi
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Proceeding: EMNLP (ClinicalNLP) 2020 11
Tasks: Classification, General Classification

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, inflammatory and degenerative neurological disease, which is monitored by a specialist using the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) and recorded in unstructured text in the form of a neurology consult note. An EDSS measurement contains an overall "EDSS" score and several functional subscores. Typically, expert knowledge is required to interpret consult notes and generate these scores. Previous approaches used limited context length Word2Vec embeddings and keyword searches to predict scores given a consult note, but often failed when scores were not explicitly stated. In this work, we present MS-BERT, the first publicly available transformer model trained on real clinical data other than MIMIC. Next, we present MSBC, a classifier that applies MS-BERT to generate embeddings and predict EDSS and functional subscores. Lastly, we explore combining MSBC with other models through the use of Snorkel to generate scores for unlabelled consult notes. MSBC achieves state-of-the-art performance on all metrics and prediction tasks and outperforms the models generated from the Snorkel ensemble. We improve Macro-F1 by 0.12 (to 0.88) for predicting EDSS and on average by 0.29 (to 0.63) for predicting functional subscores over previous Word2Vec CNN and rule-based approaches.
Recurrent neural circuits for contour detection
Authors: Drew Linsley, Junkyung Kim, Alekh Ashok, Thomas Serre
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Proceeding: ICLR 2020 1
Tasks: Contour Detection

We introduce a deep recurrent neural network architecture that approximates visual cortical circuits. We show that this architecture, which we refer to as the gamma-net, learns to solve contour detection tasks with better sample efficiency than state-of-the-art feedforward networks, while also exhibiting a classic perceptual illusion, known as the orientation-tilt illusion. Correcting this illusion significantly reduces gamma-net contour detection accuracy by driving it to prefer low-level edges over high-level object boundary contours. Overall, our study suggests that the orientation-tilt illusion is a byproduct of neural circuits that help biological visual systems achieve robust and efficient contour detection, and that incorporating these circuits in artificial neural networks can improve computer vision.
"where is this relationship going?": Understanding Relationship Trajectories in Narrative Text
Authors: Keen You, Dan Goldwasser
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Navigate, Prediction

We examine a new commonsense reasoning task: given a narrative describing a social interaction that centers on two protagonists, systems make inferences about the underlying relationship trajectory. Specifically, we propose two evaluation tasks: Relationship Outlook Prediction MCQ and Resolution Prediction MCQ. In Relationship Outlook Prediction, a system maps an interaction to a relationship outlook that captures how the interaction is expected to change the relationship. In Resolution Prediction, a system attributes a given relationship outlook to a particular resolution that explains the outcome. These two tasks parallel two real-life questions that people frequently ponder upon as they navigate different social situations: "where is this relationship going?" and "how did we end up here?". To facilitate the investigation of human social relationships through these two tasks, we construct a new dataset, Social Narrative Tree, which consists of 1250 stories documenting a variety of daily social interactions. The narratives encode a multitude of social elements that interweave to give rise to rich commonsense knowledge of how relationships evolve with respect to social interactions. We establish baseline performances using language models and the accuracies are significantly lower than human performance. The results demonstrate that models need to look beyond syntactic and semantic signals to comprehend complex human relationships.
Automatic joint damage quantification using computer vision and deep learning
Authors: Quang Tran, Jeffery R. Roesler
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Deep Learning

Joint raveled or spalled damage (henceforth called joint damage) can affect the safety and long-term performance of concrete pavements. It is important to assess and quantify the joint damage over time to assist in building action plans for maintenance, predicting maintenance costs, and maximize the concrete pavement service life. A framework for the accurate, autonomous, and rapid quantification of joint damage with a low-cost camera is proposed using a computer vision technique with a deep learning (DL) algorithm. The DL model is employed to train 263 images of sawcuts with joint damage. The trained DL model is used for pixel-wise color-masking joint damage in a series of query 2D images, which are used to reconstruct a 3D image using open-source structure from motion algorithm. Another damage quantification algorithm using a color threshold is applied to detect and compute the surface area of the damage in the 3D reconstructed image. The effectiveness of the framework was validated through inspecting joint damage at four transverse contraction joints in Illinois, USA, including three acceptable joints and one unacceptable joint by visual inspection. The results show the framework achieves 76% recall and 10% error.
Point Cloud Attribute Compression via Successive Subspace Graph Transform
Authors: Yueru Chen, Yiting shao, Jing Wang, Ge Li, C. -C. Jay Kuo
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute

Inspired by the recently proposed successive subspace learning (SSL) principles, we develop a successive subspace graph transform (SSGT) to address point cloud attribute compression in this work. The octree geometry structure is utilized to partition the point cloud, where every node of the octree represents a point cloud subspace with a certain spatial size. We design a weighted graph with self-loop to describe the subspace and define a graph Fourier transform based on the normalized graph Laplacian. The transforms are applied to large point clouds from the leaf nodes to the root node of the octree recursively, while the represented subspace is expanded from the smallest one to the whole point cloud successively. It is shown by experimental results that the proposed SSGT method offers better R-D performances than the previous Region Adaptive Haar Transform (RAHT) method.
Uncovering Latent Biases in Text: Method and Application to Peer Review
Authors: Emaad Manzoor, Nihar B. Shah
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00

Quantifying systematic disparities in numerical quantities such as employment rates and wages between population subgroups provides compelling evidence for the existence of societal biases. However, biases in the text written for members of different subgroups (such as in recommendation letters for male and non-male candidates), though widely reported anecdotally, remain challenging to quantify. In this work, we introduce a novel framework to quantify bias in text caused by the visibility of subgroup membership indicators. We develop a nonparametric estimation and inference procedure to estimate this bias. We then formalize an identification strategy to causally link the estimated bias to the visibility of subgroup membership indicators, provided observations from time periods both before and after an identity-hiding policy change. We identify an application wherein "ground truth" bias can be inferred to evaluate our framework, instead of relying on synthetic or secondary data. Specifically, we apply our framework to quantify biases in the text of peer reviews from a reputed machine learning conference before and after the conference adopted a double-blind reviewing policy. We show evidence of biases in the review ratings that serves as "ground truth", and show that our proposed framework accurately detects these biases from the review text without having access to the review ratings.
Machine Learning Link Inference of Noisy Delay-coupled Networks with Opto-Electronic Experimental Tests
Authors: Amitava Banerjee, Joseph D. Hart, Rajarshi Roy, Edward Ott
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: BIG-bench Machine Learning, Time Series, Time Series Analysis

We devise a machine learning technique to solve the general problem of inferring network links that have time-delays. The goal is to do this purely from time-series data of the network nodal states. This task has applications in fields ranging from applied physics and engineering to neuroscience and biology. To achieve this, we first train a type of machine learning system known as reservoir computing to mimic the dynamics of the unknown network. We formulate and test a technique that uses the trained parameters of the reservoir system output layer to deduce an estimate of the unknown network structure. Our technique, by its nature, is non-invasive, but is motivated by the widely-used invasive network inference method whereby the responses to active perturbations applied to the network are observed and employed to infer network links (e.g., knocking down genes to infer gene regulatory networks). We test this technique on experimental and simulated data from delay-coupled opto-electronic oscillator networks. We show that the technique often yields very good results particularly if the system does not exhibit synchrony. We also find that the presence of dynamical noise can strikingly enhance the accuracy and ability of our technique, especially in networks that exhibit synchrony.
Speech-Image Semantic Alignment Does Not Depend on Any Prior Classification Tasks
Authors: Masood S. Mortazavi
Date: 2020-10-29 00:00:00
Tasks: General Classification, Retrieval, Transfer Learning

Semantically-aligned $(speech, image)$ datasets can be used to explore "visually-grounded speech". In a majority of existing investigations, features of an image signal are extracted using neural networks "pre-trained" on other tasks (e.g., classification on ImageNet). In still others, pre-trained networks are used to extract audio features prior to semantic embedding. Without "transfer learning" through pre-trained initialization or pre-trained feature extraction, previous results have tended to show low rates of recall in $speech \rightarrow image$ and $image \rightarrow speech$ queries. Choosing appropriate neural architectures for encoders in the speech and image branches and using large datasets, one can obtain competitive recall rates without any reliance on any pre-trained initialization or feature extraction: $(speech,image)$ semantic alignment and $speech \rightarrow image$ and $image \rightarrow speech$ retrieval are canonical tasks worthy of independent investigation of their own and allow one to explore other questions---e.g., the size of the audio embedder can be reduced significantly with little loss of recall rates in $speech \rightarrow image$ and $image \rightarrow speech$ queries.
Intrinsic Sliced Wasserstein Distances for Comparing Collections of Probability Distributions on Manifolds and Graphs
Authors: Raif Rustamov, Subhabrata Majumdar
Date: 2020-10-28 00:00:00
Tasks: Two-sample testing

Collections of probability distributions arise in a variety of applications ranging from user activity pattern analysis to brain connectomics. In practice these distributions can be defined over diverse domain types including finite intervals, circles, cylinders, spheres, other manifolds, and graphs. This paper introduces an approach for detecting differences between two collections of distributions over such general domains. To this end, we propose the intrinsic slicing construction that yields a novel class of Wasserstein distances on manifolds and graphs. These distances are Hilbert embeddable, allowing us to reduce the distribution collection comparison problem to a more familiar mean testing problem in a Hilbert space. We provide two testing procedures one based on resampling and another on combining p-values from coordinate-wise tests. Our experiments in various synthetic and real data settings show that the resulting tests are powerful and the p-values are well-calibrated.
GENs: Generative Encoding Networks
Authors: Surojit Saha, Shireen Elhabian, Ross T. Whitaker
Date: 2020-10-28 00:00:00

Mapping data from and/or onto a known family of distributions has become an important topic in machine learning and data analysis. Deep generative models (e.g., generative adversarial networks ) have been used effectively to match known and unknown distributions. Nonetheless, when the form of the target distribution is known, analytical methods are advantageous in providing robust results with provable properties. In this paper, we propose and analyze the use of nonparametric density methods to estimate the Jensen-Shannon divergence for matching unknown data distributions to known target distributions, such Gaussian or mixtures of Gaussians, in latent spaces. This analytical method has several advantages: better behavior when training sample quantity is low, provable convergence properties, and relatively few parameters, which can be derived analytically. Using the proposed method, we enforce the latent representation of an autoencoder to match a target distribution in a learning framework that we call a {\em generative encoding network}. Here, we present the numerical methods; derive the expected distribution of the data in the latent space; evaluate the properties of the latent space, sample reconstruction, and generated samples; show the advantages over the adversarial counterpart; and demonstrate the application of the method in real world.