18,779 research outputs found
SkyDOT (Sky Database for Objects in the Time Domain): A Virtual Observatory for Variability Studies at LANL
The mining of Virtual Observatories (VOs) is becoming a powerful new method
for discovery in astronomy. Here we report on the development of SkyDOT (Sky
Database for Objects in the Time domain), a new Virtual Observatory, which is
dedicated to the study of sky variability. The site will confederate a number
of massive variability surveys and enable exploration of the time domain in
astronomy. We discuss the architecture of the database and the functionality of
the user interface. An important aspect of SkyDOT is that it is continuously
updated in near real time so that users can access new observations in a timely
manner. The site will also utilize high level machine learning tools that will
allow sophisticated mining of the archive. Another key feature is the real time
data stream provided by RAPTOR (RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response), a new
sky monitoring experiment under construction at Los Alamos National Laboratory
(LANL).Comment: to appear in SPIE proceedings vol. 4846, 11 pages, 5 figure
Automated Video Analysis of Animal Movements Using Gabor Orientation Filters
To quantify locomotory behavior, tools for determining the location and shape of an animal’s body are a first requirement. Video recording is a convenient technology to store raw movement data, but extracting body coordinates from video recordings is a nontrivial task. The algorithm described in this paper solves this task for videos of leeches or other quasi-linear animals in a manner inspired by the mammalian visual processing system: the video frames are fed through a bank of Gabor filters, which locally detect segments of the animal at a particular orientation. The algorithm assumes that the image location with maximal filter output lies on the animal’s body and traces its shape out in both directions from there. The algorithm successfully extracted location and shape information from video clips of swimming leeches, as well as from still photographs of swimming and crawling snakes. A Matlab implementation with a graphical user interface is available online, and should make this algorithm conveniently usable in many other contexts
Accurate and reliable segmentation of the optic disc in digital fundus images
We describe a complete pipeline for the detection and accurate automatic segmentation of the optic disc in digital fundus images. This procedure provides separation of vascular information and accurate inpainting of vessel-removed images, symmetry-based optic disc localization, and fitting of incrementally complex contour models at increasing resolutions using information related to inpainted images and vessel masks. Validation experiments, performed on a large dataset of images of healthy and pathological eyes, annotated by experts and partially graded with a quality label, demonstrate the good performances of the proposed approach. The method is able to detect the optic disc and trace its contours better than the other systems presented in the literature and tested on the same data. The average error in the obtained contour masks is reasonably close to the interoperator errors and suitable for practical applications. The optic disc segmentation pipeline is currently integrated in a complete software suite for the semiautomatic quantification of retinal vessel properties from fundus camera images (VAMPIRE)
Self-Organizing Information Fusion and Hierarchical Knowledge Discovery: A New Framework Using Artmap Neural Networks
Classifying novel terrain or objects from sparse, complex data may require the resolution of conflicting information from sensors woring at different times, locations, and scales, and from sources with different goals and situations. Information fusion methods can help resolve inconsistencies, as when eveidence variously suggests that and object's class is car, truck, or airplane. The methods described her address a complementary problem, supposing that information from sensors and experts is reliable though inconsistent, as when evidence suggests that an object's class is car, vehicle, and man-made. Underlying relationships among classes are assumed to be unknown to the autonomated system or the human user. The ARTMAP information fusion system uses distributed code representations that exploit the neural network's capacity for one-to-many learning in order to produce self-organizing expert systems that discover hierachical knowlege structures. The fusion system infers multi-level relationships among groups of output classes, without any supervised labeling of these relationships. The procedure is illustrated with two image examples, but is not limited to image domain.Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-01-1-0423); National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NMA 201-01-1-2016, NMA 501-03-1-2030); National Science Foundation (SBE-0354378, DGE-0221680); Office of Naval Research (N00014-01-1-0624); Department of Homeland Securit
Testing Interestingness Measures in Practice: A Large-Scale Analysis of Buying Patterns
Understanding customer buying patterns is of great interest to the retail
industry and has shown to benefit a wide variety of goals ranging from managing
stocks to implementing loyalty programs. Association rule mining is a common
technique for extracting correlations such as "people in the South of France
buy ros\'e wine" or "customers who buy pat\'e also buy salted butter and sour
bread." Unfortunately, sifting through a high number of buying patterns is not
useful in practice, because of the predominance of popular products in the top
rules. As a result, a number of "interestingness" measures (over 30) have been
proposed to rank rules. However, there is no agreement on which measures are
more appropriate for retail data. Moreover, since pattern mining algorithms
output thousands of association rules for each product, the ability for an
analyst to rely on ranking measures to identify the most interesting ones is
crucial. In this paper, we develop CAPA (Comparative Analysis of PAtterns), a
framework that provides analysts with the ability to compare the outcome of
interestingness measures applied to buying patterns in the retail industry. We
report on how we used CAPA to compare 34 measures applied to over 1,800 stores
of Intermarch\'e, one of the largest food retailers in France
Automatic LQR Tuning Based on Gaussian Process Global Optimization
This paper proposes an automatic controller tuning framework based on linear
optimal control combined with Bayesian optimization. With this framework, an
initial set of controller gains is automatically improved according to a
pre-defined performance objective evaluated from experimental data. The
underlying Bayesian optimization algorithm is Entropy Search, which represents
the latent objective as a Gaussian process and constructs an explicit belief
over the location of the objective minimum. This is used to maximize the
information gain from each experimental evaluation. Thus, this framework shall
yield improved controllers with fewer evaluations compared to alternative
approaches. A seven-degree-of-freedom robot arm balancing an inverted pole is
used as the experimental demonstrator. Results of a two- and four-dimensional
tuning problems highlight the method's potential for automatic controller
tuning on robotic platforms.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to appear in IEEE 2016 International Conference
on Robotics and Automation. Video demonstration of the experiments available
at https://am.is.tuebingen.mpg.de/publications/marco_icra_201
Prospects for Theranostics in Neurosurgical Imaging: Empowering Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy Diagnostics via Deep Learning
Confocal laser endomicroscopy (CLE) is an advanced optical fluorescence
imaging technology that has the potential to increase intraoperative precision,
extend resection, and tailor surgery for malignant invasive brain tumors
because of its subcellular dimension resolution. Despite its promising
diagnostic potential, interpreting the gray tone fluorescence images can be
difficult for untrained users. In this review, we provide a detailed
description of bioinformatical analysis methodology of CLE images that begins
to assist the neurosurgeon and pathologist to rapidly connect on-the-fly
intraoperative imaging, pathology, and surgical observation into a
conclusionary system within the concept of theranostics. We present an overview
and discuss deep learning models for automatic detection of the diagnostic CLE
images and discuss various training regimes and ensemble modeling effect on the
power of deep learning predictive models. Two major approaches reviewed in this
paper include the models that can automatically classify CLE images into
diagnostic/nondiagnostic, glioma/nonglioma, tumor/injury/normal categories and
models that can localize histological features on the CLE images using weakly
supervised methods. We also briefly review advances in the deep learning
approaches used for CLE image analysis in other organs. Significant advances in
speed and precision of automated diagnostic frame selection would augment the
diagnostic potential of CLE, improve operative workflow and integration into
brain tumor surgery. Such technology and bioinformatics analytics lend
themselves to improved precision, personalization, and theranostics in brain
tumor treatment.Comment: See the final version published in Frontiers in Oncology here:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fonc.2018.00240/ful
Data Mining Techniques for Complex User-Generated Data
Nowadays, the amount of collected information is continuously growing in a variety of different domains. Data mining techniques are powerful instruments to effectively analyze these large data collections and extract hidden and useful knowledge.
Vast amount of User-Generated Data (UGD) is being created every day, such as user behavior, user-generated content, user exploitation of available services and user mobility in different domains. Some common critical issues arise for the UGD analysis process such as the large dataset cardinality and dimensionality, the variable data distribution and inherent sparseness, and the heterogeneous data to model the different facets of the targeted domain. Consequently, the extraction of useful knowledge from such data collections is a challenging task, and proper data mining solutions should be devised for the problem under analysis.
In this thesis work, we focus on the design and development of innovative solutions to support data mining activities over User-Generated Data characterised by different critical issues, via the integration of different data mining techniques in a unified frame- work. Real datasets coming from three example domains characterized by the above critical issues are considered as reference cases, i.e., health care, social network, and ur- ban environment domains. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches to discover useful knowledge from different domains
Investigating Light Curve Modulation via Kernel Smoothing. I. Application to 53 fundamental mode and first-overtone Cepheids in the LMC
Recent studies have revealed a hitherto unknown complexity of Cepheid
pulsation. We implement local kernel regression to search for both period and
amplitude modulations simultaneously in continuous time and to investigate
their detectability, and test this new method on 53 classical Cepheids from the
OGLE-III catalog. We determine confidence intervals using parametric and
non-parametric bootstrap sampling to estimate significance and investigate
multi-periodicity using a modified pre-whitening approach that relies on
time-dependent light curve parameters. We find a wide variety of period and
amplitude modulations and confirm that first overtone pulsators are less stable
than fundamental mode Cepheids. Significant temporal variations in period are
more frequently detected than those in amplitude. We find a range of modulation
intensities, suggesting that both amplitude and period modulations are
ubiquitous among Cepheids. Over the 12-year baseline offered by OGLE-III, we
find that period changes are often non-linear, sometimes cyclic, suggesting
physical origins beyond secular evolution. Our method more efficiently detects
modulations (period and amplitude) than conventional methods reliant on
pre-whitening with constant light curve parameters and more accurately
pre-whitens time series, removing spurious secondary peaks effectively.Comment: Re-submitted including revisions to Astronomy and Astrophysic
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