Independent Component Analysis Enhancements for Source Separation in Immersive Audio Environments

In immersive audio environments with distributed microphones, Independent Component Analysis (ICA) can be applied to uncover signals from a mixture of other signals and noise, such as in a cocktail party recording. ICA algorithms have been developed for instantaneous source mixtures and convolutional source mixtures. While ICA for instantaneous mixtures works when no delays exist between the signals in each mixture, distributed microphone recordings typically result various delays of the signals over the recorded channels. The convolutive ICA algorithm should account for delays; however, it requires many parameters to be set and often has stability issues. This thesis introduces the Channel Aligned FastICA (CAICA), which requires knowledge of the source distance to each microphone, but does not require knowledge of noise sources. Furthermore, the CAICA is combined with Time Frequency Masking (TFM), yielding even better SOI extraction even in low SNR environments. Simulations were conducted for ranking experiments tested the performance of three algorithms: Weighted Beamforming (WB), CAICA, CAICA with TFM. The Closest Microphone (CM) recording is used as a reference for all three. Statistical analyses on the results demonstrated superior performance for the CAICA with TFM. The algorithms were applied to experimental recordings to support the conclusions of the simulations. These techniques can be deployed in mobile platforms, used in surveillance for capturing human speech and potentially adapted to biomedical fields

Unsupervised spectral classification of astronomical x-ray sources based on independent component analysis

By virtue of the sensitivity of the XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray telescopes, astronomers are capable of probing increasingly faint X-ray sources in the universe. On the other hand, we have to face a tremendous amount of X-ray imaging data collected by these observatories. We developed an efficient framework to classify astronomical X-ray sources through natural grouping of their reduced dimensionality profiles, which can faithfully represent the high dimensional spectral information. X-ray imaging spectral extraction techniques, which use standard astronomical software (e.g., SAS, FTOOLS and CIAO), provide an efficient means to investigate multiple X-ray sources in one or more observations at the same time. After applying independent component analysis (ICA), the high-dimensional spectra can be expressed by reduced dimensionality profiles in an independent space. An infrared spectral data set obtained for the stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud,observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Spectrograph, has been used to test the unsupervised classification algorithms. The least classification error is achieved by the hierarchical clustering algorithm with the average linkage of the data, in which each spectrum is scaled by its maximum amplitude. Then we applied a similar hierarchical clustering algorithm based on ICA to a deep XMM-Newton X-ray observation of the field of the eruptive young star V1647 Ori. Our classification method establishes that V1647 Ori is a spectrally distinct X-ray source in this field. Finally, we classified the Xray sources in the central field of a large survey, the Subaru/XMM-Newton deep survey, which contains a large population of high-redshift extragalactic sources. A small group of sources with maximum spectral peak above 1 keV are easily picked out from the spectral data set, and these sources appear to be associated with active galaxies. In general, these experiments confirm that our classification framework is an efficient X-ray imaging spectral analysis tool that gives astronomers insight into the fundamental physicalmechanisms responsible for X-ray emission and, furthermore, can be applied to a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum

Development of 2D- and 3D-BTEM for pattern recognition in higher-order spectroscopic and other data arrays

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Models and analysis of vocal emissions for biomedical applications

This book of Proceedings collects the papers presented at the 3rd International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications, MAVEBA 2003, held 10-12 December 2003, Firenze, Italy. The workshop is organised every two years, and aims to stimulate contacts between specialists active in research and industrial developments, in the area of voice analysis for biomedical applications. The scope of the Workshop includes all aspects of voice modelling and analysis, ranging from fundamental research to all kinds of biomedical applications and related established and advanced technologies