Generalizing smoothness constraints from discrete samples

We study how certain smoothness constraints, for example, piecewise continuity, can be generalized from a discrete set of analog-valued data, by modifying the error backpropagation, learning algorithm. Numerical simulations demonstrate that by imposing two heuristic objectives — (1) reducing the number of hidden units, and (2) minimizing the magnitudes of the weights in the network — during the learning process, one obtains a network with a response function that smoothly interpolates between the training data

Signal Recovery on Graphs: Random versus Experimentally Designed Sampling

We study signal recovery on graphs based on two sampling strategies: random sampling and experimentally designed sampling. We propose a new class of smooth graph signals, called approximately bandlimited, which generalizes the bandlimited class and is similar to the globally smooth class. We then propose two recovery strategies based on random sampling and experimentally designed sampling. The proposed recovery strategy based on experimentally designed sampling is similar to the leverage scores used in the matrix approximation. We show that while both strategies are unbiased estimators for the low-frequency components, the convergence rate of experimentally designed sampling is much faster than that of random sampling when a graph is irregular. We validate the proposed recovery strategies on three specific graphs: a ring graph, an Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi graph, and a star graph. The simulation results support the theoretical analysis.Comment: Correct some typo

Recovery Conditions and Sampling Strategies for Network Lasso

The network Lasso is a recently proposed convex optimization method for machine learning from massive network structured datasets, i.e., big data over networks. It is a variant of the well-known least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso), which is underlying many methods in learning and signal processing involving sparse models. Highly scalable implementations of the network Lasso can be obtained by state-of-the art proximal methods, e.g., the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). By generalizing the concept of the compatibility condition put forward by van de Geer and Buehlmann as a powerful tool for the analysis of plain Lasso, we derive a sufficient condition, i.e., the network compatibility condition, on the underlying network topology such that network Lasso accurately learns a clustered underlying graph signal. This network compatibility condition relates the location of the sampled nodes with the clustering structure of the network. In particular, the NCC informs the choice of which nodes to sample, or in machine learning terms, which data points provide most information if labeled.Comment: nominated as student paper award finalist at Asilomar 2017. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1704.0210

Image Restoration Using Joint Statistical Modeling in Space-Transform Domain

This paper presents a novel strategy for high-fidelity image restoration by characterizing both local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity of natural images in a unified statistical manner. The main contributions are three-folds. First, from the perspective of image statistics, a joint statistical modeling (JSM) in an adaptive hybrid space-transform domain is established, which offers a powerful mechanism of combining local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity simultaneously to ensure a more reliable and robust estimation. Second, a new form of minimization functional for solving image inverse problem is formulated using JSM under regularization-based framework. Finally, in order to make JSM tractable and robust, a new Split-Bregman based algorithm is developed to efficiently solve the above severely underdetermined inverse problem associated with theoretical proof of convergence. Extensive experiments on image inpainting, image deblurring and mixed Gaussian plus salt-and-pepper noise removal applications verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figures, 7 Tables, to be published in IEEE Transactions on Circuits System and Video Technology (TCSVT). High resolution pdf version and Code can be found at: http://idm.pku.edu.cn/staff/zhangjian/IRJSM