190,762 research outputs found
Efficient Localized Inference for Large Graphical Models
We propose a new localized inference algorithm for answering marginalization
queries in large graphical models with the correlation decay property. Given a
query variable and a large graphical model, we define a much smaller model in a
local region around the query variable in the target model so that the marginal
distribution of the query variable can be accurately approximated. We introduce
two approximation error bounds based on the Dobrushin's comparison theorem and
apply our bounds to derive a greedy expansion algorithm that efficiently guides
the selection of neighbor nodes for localized inference. We verify our
theoretical bounds on various datasets and demonstrate that our localized
inference algorithm can provide fast and accurate approximation for large
graphical models
A trust-region method for stochastic variational inference with applications to streaming data
Stochastic variational inference allows for fast posterior inference in
complex Bayesian models. However, the algorithm is prone to local optima which
can make the quality of the posterior approximation sensitive to the choice of
hyperparameters and initialization. We address this problem by replacing the
natural gradient step of stochastic varitional inference with a trust-region
update. We show that this leads to generally better results and reduced
sensitivity to hyperparameters. We also describe a new strategy for variational
inference on streaming data and show that here our trust-region method is
crucial for getting good performance.Comment: in Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Machine
Learning, 201
A formal soundness proof of region-based memory management for object-oriented paradigm.
Region-based memory management has been proposed as a viable alternative to garbage collection for real-time applications and embedded software. In our previous work we have developed a region type inference algorithm that provides an automatic compile-time region-based memory management for object-oriented paradigm. In this work we present a formal soundness proof of the region type system that is the target of our region inference. More precisely, we prove that the object-oriented programs accepted by our region type system achieve region-based memory management in a safe way. That means, the regions follow a stack-of-regions discipline and regions deallocation never create dangling references in the store and on the program stack. Our contribution is to provide a simple syntactic proof that is based on induction and follows the standard steps of a type safety proof. In contrast the previous safety proofs provided for other region type systems employ quite elaborate techniques
Fast joint detection-estimation of evoked brain activity in event-related fMRI using a variational approach
In standard clinical within-subject analyses of event-related fMRI data, two
steps are usually performed separately: detection of brain activity and
estimation of the hemodynamic response. Because these two steps are inherently
linked, we adopt the so-called region-based Joint Detection-Estimation (JDE)
framework that addresses this joint issue using a multivariate inference for
detection and estimation. JDE is built by making use of a regional bilinear
generative model of the BOLD response and constraining the parameter estimation
by physiological priors using temporal and spatial information in a Markovian
modeling. In contrast to previous works that use Markov Chain Monte Carlo
(MCMC) techniques to approximate the resulting intractable posterior
distribution, we recast the JDE into a missing data framework and derive a
Variational Expectation-Maximization (VEM) algorithm for its inference. A
variational approximation is used to approximate the Markovian model in the
unsupervised spatially adaptive JDE inference, which allows fine automatic
tuning of spatial regularisation parameters. It follows a new algorithm that
exhibits interesting properties compared to the previously used MCMC-based
approach. Experiments on artificial and real data show that VEM-JDE is robust
to model mis-specification and provides computational gain while maintaining
good performance in terms of activation detection and hemodynamic shape
recovery
Automatic Image Segmentation by Dynamic Region Merging
This paper addresses the automatic image segmentation problem in a region
merging style. With an initially over-segmented image, in which the many
regions (or super-pixels) with homogeneous color are detected, image
segmentation is performed by iteratively merging the regions according to a
statistical test. There are two essential issues in a region merging algorithm:
order of merging and the stopping criterion. In the proposed algorithm, these
two issues are solved by a novel predicate, which is defined by the sequential
probability ratio test (SPRT) and the maximum likelihood criterion. Starting
from an over-segmented image, neighboring regions are progressively merged if
there is an evidence for merging according to this predicate. We show that the
merging order follows the principle of dynamic programming. This formulates
image segmentation as an inference problem, where the final segmentation is
established based on the observed image. We also prove that the produced
segmentation satisfies certain global properties. In addition, a faster
algorithm is developed to accelerate the region merging process, which
maintains a nearest neighbor graph in each iteration. Experiments on real
natural images are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed
dynamic region merging algorithm.Comment: 28 pages. This paper is under review in IEEE TI
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