Aspects of algorithms and dynamics of cellular paradigms

Els paradigmes cel·lulars, com les xarxes neuronals cel·lulars (CNN, en anglès) i els autòmats cel·lulars (CA, en anglès), són una eina excel·lent de càlcul, al ser equivalents a una màquina universal de Turing. La introducció de la màquina universal CNN (CNN-UM, en anglès) ha permès desenvolupar hardware, el nucli computacional del qual funciona segons la filosofia cel·lular; aquest hardware ha trobat aplicació en diversos camps al llarg de la darrera dècada. Malgrat això, encara hi ha moltes preguntes a obertes sobre com definir els algoritmes d'una CNN-UM i com estudiar la dinàmica dels autòmats cel·lulars. En aquesta tesis es tracten els dos problemes: primer, es demostra que es possible acotar l'espai dels algoritmes per a la CNN-UM i explorar-lo gràcies a les tècniques genètiques; i segon, s'expliquen els fonaments de l'estudi dels CA per mitjà de la dinàmica no lineal (segons la definició de Chua) i s'il·lustra com aquesta tècnica ha permès trobar resultats innovadors.Los paradigmas celulares, como las redes neuronales celulares (CNN, eninglés) y los autómatas celulares (CA, en inglés), son una excelenteherramienta de cálculo, al ser equivalentes a una maquina universal deTuring. La introducción de la maquina universal CNN (CNN-UM, eninglés) ha permitido desarrollar hardware cuyo núcleo computacionalfunciona según la filosofía celular; dicho hardware ha encontradoaplicación en varios campos a lo largo de la ultima década. Sinembargo, hay aun muchas preguntas abiertas sobre como definir losalgoritmos de una CNN-UM y como estudiar la dinámica de los autómatascelular. En esta tesis se tratan ambos problemas: primero se demuestraque es posible acotar el espacio de los algoritmos para la CNN-UM yexplorarlo gracias a técnicas genéticas; segundo, se explican losfundamentos del estudio de los CA por medio de la dinámica no lineal(según la definición de Chua) y se ilustra como esta técnica hapermitido encontrar resultados novedosos.Cellular paradigms, like Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs) and Cellular Automata (CA) are an excellent tool to perform computation, since they are equivalent to a Universal Turing machine. The introduction of the Cellular Neural Network - Universal Machine (CNN-UM) allowed us to develop hardware whose computational core works according to the principles of cellular paradigms; such a hardware has found application in a number of fields throughout the last decade. Nevertheless, there are still many open questions about how to define algorithms for a CNN-UM, and how to study the dynamics of Cellular Automata. In this dissertation both problems are tackled: first, we prove that it is possible to bound the space of all algorithms of CNN-UM and explore it through genetic techniques; second, we explain the fundamentals of the nonlinear perspective of CA (according to Chua's definition), and we illustrate how this technique has allowed us to find novel results

Pattern Recognition

A wealth of advanced pattern recognition algorithms are emerging from the interdiscipline between technologies of effective visual features and the human-brain cognition process. Effective visual features are made possible through the rapid developments in appropriate sensor equipments, novel filter designs, and viable information processing architectures. While the understanding of human-brain cognition process broadens the way in which the computer can perform pattern recognition tasks. The present book is intended to collect representative researches around the globe focusing on low-level vision, filter design, features and image descriptors, data mining and analysis, and biologically inspired algorithms. The 27 chapters coved in this book disclose recent advances and new ideas in promoting the techniques, technology and applications of pattern recognition

Reservoir Computing: computation with dynamical systems

In het onderzoeksgebied Machine Learning worden systemen onderzocht die kunnen leren op basis van voorbeelden. Binnen dit onderzoeksgebied zijn de recurrente neurale netwerken een belangrijke deelgroep. Deze netwerken zijn abstracte modellen van de werking van delen van de hersenen. Zij zijn in staat om zeer complexe temporele problemen op te lossen maar zijn over het algemeen zeer moeilijk om te trainen. Recentelijk zijn een aantal gelijkaardige methodes voorgesteld die dit trainingsprobleem elimineren. Deze methodes worden aangeduid met de naam Reservoir Computing. Reservoir Computing combineert de indrukwekkende rekenkracht van recurrente neurale netwerken met een eenvoudige trainingsmethode. Bovendien blijkt dat deze trainingsmethoden niet beperkt zijn tot neurale netwerken, maar kunnen toegepast worden op generieke dynamische systemen. Waarom deze systemen goed werken en welke eigenschappen bepalend zijn voor de prestatie is evenwel nog niet duidelijk. Voor dit proefschrift is onderzoek gedaan naar de dynamische eigenschappen van generieke Reservoir Computing systemen. Zo is experimenteel aangetoond dat de idee van Reservoir Computing ook toepasbaar is op niet-neurale netwerken van dynamische knopen. Verder is een maat voorgesteld die gebruikt kan worden om het dynamisch regime van een reservoir te meten. Tenslotte is een adaptatieregel geïntroduceerd die voor een breed scala reservoirtypes de dynamica van het reservoir kan afregelen tot het gewenste dynamisch regime. De technieken beschreven in dit proefschrift zijn gedemonstreerd op verschillende academische en ingenieurstoepassingen

Crowd Abnormal Behaviour Detection and Analysis

The analysis and understanding of abnormal behaviours in human crowds is a challenging task in pattern recognition and computer vision. First of all, the semantic definition of the term “crowd” is ambiguous. Secondly, the taxonomy of crowd behaviours is usually rudimentary and intrinsically complicated. How to identify and construct effective features for crowd behaviour classification is a prominent challenge. Thirdly, the acquisition of suitable video for crowd analysis is another critical problem. In order to address those issues, a categorization model for abnormal behaviour types is defined according to the state-of-the-art. In the novel taxonomy of crowd behaviour, eight types of crowd behaviours are defined based on the key visual patterns. An enhanced social force-based model is proposed to achieve the visual realism in crowd simulation, hence to generate customizable videos for crowd analysis. The proposed model consists of a long-term behavior control model based on A-star path finding algorithm and a short-term interaction handling model based on the enhanced social force. The proposed simulation approach produced all the crowd behaviours in the new taxonomy for the training and testing of the detection procedure. On the aspect of feature engineering, an innovative signature is devised for assisting the segmentation of crowd in both low and high density. The signature is modelled with derived features from Grey-Level Co-occurrence Matrix. Another major breakthrough is an effective approach for efficiently extracting spatial temporal information based on the information entropy theory and Gabor background subtraction. The extraction approach is capable of obtaining the texture with most motion information, which could help the detection approach to achieve the real-time processing. Overall, these contributions have supported the crucial components in a pipeline of abnormal crowd behaviour detecting process. This process is consisted of crowd behaviour taxonomy, crowd video generation, crowd segmentation and crowd abnormal behaviour detection. Experiments for each component show promising results, and proved the accessibility of the proposed approaches

Robust behavioral malware detection

Computer security attacks evolve to evade deployed defenses. Recent attacks have ranged from exploiting generic software vulnerabilities in memory-unsafe languages such as buffer overflows and format string vulnerabilities to exploiting logic errors in web applications, through means such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Furthermore, recent attacks have focused on escalating privileges and stealing sensitive information by exploiting new hardware or operating system (OS) interfaces. Computer security attacks are also now relying on social engineering techniques to run malicious programs on victims' machines; instances of such abuse include phishing and watering hole attacks, both of which trick people into running malicious code or divulging confidential information. Thus, traditional computer security methods, such as OS confinement and program analysis, will not prevent new attacks that do not violate OS confinement or present illegal program behaviors. Another challenge is that traditional security approaches have large trusted code bases (TCBs), which include hardware, OSs, and other software components that implement authentication and authorization logic across a distributed system. This is a vulnerable area because these components are complex and often contain vulnerabilities that undermine the overall system's integrity or confidentiality. Evasive attacks on vulnerable systems -- especially in instances where trusted components turn malicious -- inspire the creation of defenses that can augment formally specified mechanisms against known threats. Specifically, this thesis advances the state of the art in behavioral malware detection -- detecting previously unknown malware in the very early stages of infection within an enterprise network. Here we assess three fundamental insights of modern-day attacks and then describe a cross-layer defense against such attacks. First, we make a low-level machine state visible to behavioral analysis, significantly minimizing the TCB and its associated vulnerabilities. Specifically, our behavioral detector utilizes an executable code's dynamic properties, with architectural and micro-architectural states as input. Second, we evaluate behavioral detectors against adaptive adversaries. For this purpose, we introduce a new metric to determine a detector's robustness against malware modifications, which serves as a step toward explainability of machine learning-based malware detectors. Finally, we exploit the fact that attacks spread through only a limited number of vectors and propose new techniques to analyze the resulting dynamic correlations created among machines. These insights show that behavioral detectors can efficiently protect both individual devices and end hosts within enterprise networks. We present three types of such behavioral detectors. Sherlock protects resource-constrained devices, such as mobile phones and Internet-of-things (IoT) devices, without modifying the software/hardware stack. Sherlock's supervised and unsupervised versions outperform prior work by 24.7% and 12.5% (area under the curve (AUC) metric), respectively, and detects stealthy malware that often evades static analysis tools. The second behavioral detector, Shape-GD, protects devices within an enterprise network. It monitors devices on the network, aggregates data from weak local detectors, overlays that with network-level information, and then makes early, robust predictions regarding malicious activity. Shape-GD achieves its goals by exploiting latent attack semantics. Specifically, it analyzes communication patterns across multiple devices, partitioning them into neighborhoods. Devices within the same neighborhood are likely to be exposed to the same attack vector. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the conditional distribution of false positives is different from that of true positives; i.e., given a neighborhood of nodes, we can compute the aggregate distributional shape of alert feature vectors from the neighborhood itself and provide robust labels. We evaluate Shape-GD by emulating a large community of Windows systems using the system call traces from a few thousand malicious and benign applications; we simulate both a phishing attack in a corporate email network as well as a watering hole attack through a popular website. In both scenarios, Shape-GD identifies malware early on (~100 infected nodes in a ~100K-node system for watering hole attacks, and ~10 of ~1,000 for phishing attacks) and robustly (with ~100% global true-positive and ~1% global false-positive rates). The third behavioral detector, Centurion, detects malware across machines monitored by an anti-virus company. It is able to analyze behavior from 5 million Symantec client machines in real time and discovers malware by correlating file downloads across multiple machines. Compared with a recent local detector that analyzes metadata from file downloads, Centurion reduced the number of false positives from ~1M to ~110K and increased the true-positive rate by a factor of ~2.5. In addition, on average, Centurion detects malware 345 days earlier than commercial anti-virus products.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

単層カーボンナノチューブ/ポルフィリン-ポリ酸ランダムネットワークを用いたマテリアルリザバー演算素子 —次世代機械知能への新規アプローチ

In a layman’s term, computation is defined as the execution of a given instruction through a programmable algorithm. History has it that starting from the simplest calculator to the sophisticated von Neumann machine, the above definition has been followed without a flaw. Logical operations for which a human takes a minute long to solve, is a matter of fraction of seconds for these gadgets. But contrastingly, when it comes to critical and analytical thinking that requires learning through observation like the human brain, these powerful machines falter and lag behind. Thus, inspired from the brain’s neural circuit, software models of neural networks (NN) integrated with high-speed supercomputers were developed as an alternative tool to implement machine intelligent tasks of function optimization, pattern, and voice recognition. But as device downscaling and transistor performance approaches the constant regime of Moore’s law due to high CMOS fabrication cost and large tunneling energy loss, training these algorithms over multiple hidden layers is turning out to be a grave concern for future applications. As a result, the interplay between faster performance and low computational power requirement for complex tasks deems highly disproportional. Therefore, alternative in terms of both NN models and conventional Neumann architecture needs to be addressed in today’s age for next-generation machine intelligence systems. Fortunately, through extensive research and studies, unconventional computing using a reservoir based neural network platform, called in-materio reservoir computing (RC) has come to the rescue. In-maerio RC uses physical, biological, chemical, cellular automata and other inanimate dynamical systems as a source of non-linear high dimensional spatio-temporal information processing unit to construct a specific target task. RC not only has a three-layer simplified neural architectural layer, but also imposes a cheap, fast, and simplified optimization of only the readout weights with machine intelligent regression algorithm to construct the supervised objective target via a weighted linear combination of the readouts. Thus, utilizing this idea, herein in this work we report such an in-materio RC with a dynamical random network of single walled carbon nanotube/porphyrin-polyoxometalate (SWNT/Por-POM) device. We begin with Chapter 1, which deals with the introduction covering the literature of ANN evolution and the shortcomings of von Neumann architecture and training models of these ANN, which leads us to adopt the in-materio RC architecture. We design the problem statement focused on extending the theoretical RC model of previously suggested SWNT/POM network to an experimental one and present the objective of fabricating a random network based on nanomaterials as they closely resemble the network structure of the brain. Finally, we conclude by stating the scope of this research work aiming towards validating the non-linear high dimensional reservoir property SWNT/Por-POM holds for it to explicitly demonstrate the RC benchmark tasks of optimization and classification. Chapter 2 describes the methodology including the chemical repository required for the facile synthesis of the material. The synthesis part is divided broadly into SWNT purification and then its dispersion with Por-POM to form the desired complex. It is then followed up with the microelectrode array fabrication and the consequent wet-transfer thin film deposition to give the ultimate reservoir architecture of input-output control read pads with SWNT/Por-POM reservoir. Finally we give a briefing of AFM, UV-Vis spectroscopy, FE-SEM characterization techniques of SWNT/Por-POM complex along with the electrical set-up interfaced with software algorithm to demonstrate the RC approach of in-materio machine intelligence. In Chapter 3, we study the current dynamics as a function of voltage and time and validate the non-linear information processing ability intrinsic to the device. The study reveals that the negative differential resistance (NDR) arising from redox nature of Por-POM results in oscillating random noise outputs giving rise to 1/f brain-like spatio-temporal information. We compute the memory capacity (MC) and prove that the device exhibits echo state property of fading memory, but remembers very little of the past information. The low MC and high non-linearity allowed us to choose mostly non-linear tasks of waveform generation, Boolean logic optimization and one-hot vector binary object classification as the RC benchmark. The Chapter 4 relates to the waveform generation task. Utilizing the high dimensional voltage readouts of varying amplitude, phase and higher harmonic frequencies, relative to input sine wave, a regression optimization was performed towards constructing cosine, triangular, square and sawtooth waves resulting in a high accuracy of around 95%. The task complexity of function optimization was further enhanced in Chapter 5 where two inputs were used to construct Boolean logic functions of OR, AND, XOR, NOR, NAND and XNOR. Similar to the waveform, accuracy over 95% could be achieved due to the presence of NDR nonlinearity. Furthermore, the device was also tested for classification problem in Chapter 6. Here we showed an off-line binary classification of four object toys; hedgehog, dog, block and bus, using the grasped tactile information of these objects as inputs obtained from the Toyota Human Support Robot. A one-ridge regression analysis to fit the hot vector supervised target was used to optimize the output weights for predicting the correct outcome. All the objects were successfully classified owing to the 1/f information processing factor. Lastly, we conclude the section in Chapter 7 with the future scope of extending the idea to fabricate a 3-D model of the same material as it opens up opportunity for higher memory capacity fruitful for future benchmark tasks of time-series prediction. Overall, our research marks a step stone in utilizing SWNT/Por-POM as the in-materio RC for the very first time thereby making it a desirable candidate for next-generation machine intelligence.九州工業大学博士学位論文 学位記番号：生工博甲第425号 学位授与年月日：令和3年12月27日1 Introduction and Literature review|2 Methodology|3 Reservoir dynamics emerging from an incidental structure of single-walled carbon nanotube/porphyrin-polyoxometalate complex|4 Fourier transform waveforms via in-materio reservoir computing from single-walled carbon nanotube/porphyrin-polyoxometalate complex|5 Room temperature demonstration of in-materio reservoir computing for optimizing Boolean function with single-walled carbon nanotube/porphyrin-polyoxometalate composite|6 Binary object classification with tactile sensory input information of via single-walled carbon nanotube/porphyrin-polyoxometalate network as in-materio reservoir computing|7 Future scope and Conclusion九州工業大学令和3年

Supervised learning-based multimodal MRI brain image analysis

Medical imaging plays an important role in clinical procedures related to cancer, such as diagnosis, treatment selection, and therapy response evaluation. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the most popular acquisition modalities which is widely used in brain tumour analysis and can be acquired with different acquisition protocols, e.g. conventional and advanced. Automated segmentation of brain tumours in MR images is a difficult task due to their high variation in size, shape and appearance. Although many studies have been conducted, it still remains a challenging task and improving accuracy of tumour segmentation is an ongoing field. The aim of this thesis is to develop a fully automated method for detection and segmentation of the abnormal tissue associated with brain tumour (tumour core and oedema) from multimodal MRI images. In this thesis, firstly, the whole brain tumour is segmented from fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) MRI, which is commonly acquired in clinics. The segmentation is achieved using region-wise classification, in which regions are derived from superpixels. Several image features including intensity-based, Gabor textons, fractal analysis and curvatures are calculated from each superpixel within the entire brain area in FLAIR MRI to ensure a robust classification. Extremely randomised trees (ERT) classifies each superpixel into tumour and non-tumour. Secondly, the method is extended to 3D supervoxel based learning for segmentation and classification of tumour tissue subtypes in multimodal MRI brain images. Supervoxels are generated using the information across the multimodal MRI data set. This is then followed by a random forests (RF) classifier to classify each supervoxel into tumour core, oedema or healthy brain tissue. The information from the advanced protocols of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), i.e. isotropic (p) and anisotropic (q) components is also incorporated to the conventional MRI to improve segmentation accuracy. Thirdly, to further improve the segmentation of tumour tissue subtypes, the machine-learned features from fully convolutional neural network (FCN) are investigated and combined with hand-designed texton features to encode global information and local dependencies into feature representation. The score map with pixel-wise predictions is used as a feature map which is learned from multimodal MRI training dataset using the FCN. The machine-learned features, along with hand-designed texton features are then applied to random forests to classify each MRI image voxel into normal brain tissues and different parts of tumour. The methods are evaluated on two datasets: 1) clinical dataset, and 2) publicly available Multimodal Brain Tumour Image Segmentation Benchmark (BRATS) 2013 and 2017 dataset. The experimental results demonstrate the high detection and segmentation performance of the III single modal (FLAIR) method. The average detection sensitivity, balanced error rate (BER) and the Dice overlap measure for the segmented tumour against the ground truth for the clinical data are 89.48%, 6% and 0.91, respectively; whilst, for the BRATS dataset, the corresponding evaluation results are 88.09%, 6% and 0.88, respectively. The corresponding results for the tumour (including tumour core and oedema) in the case of multimodal MRI method are 86%, 7%, 0.84, for the clinical dataset and 96%, 2% and 0.89 for the BRATS 2013 dataset. The results of the FCN based method show that the application of the RF classifier to multimodal MRI images using machine-learned features based on FCN and hand-designed features based on textons provides promising segmentations. The Dice overlap measure for automatic brain tumor segmentation against ground truth for the BRATS 2013 dataset is 0.88, 0.80 and 0.73 for complete tumor, core and enhancing tumor, respectively, which is competitive to the state-of-the-art methods. The corresponding results for BRATS 2017 dataset are 0.86, 0.78 and 0.66 respectively. The methods demonstrate promising results in the segmentation of brain tumours. This provides a close match to expert delineation across all grades of glioma, leading to a faster and more reproducible method of brain tumour detection and delineation to aid patient management. In the experiments, texton has demonstrated its advantages of providing significant information to distinguish various patterns in both 2D and 3D spaces. The segmentation accuracy has also been largely increased by fusing information from multimodal MRI images. Moreover, a unified framework is present which complementarily integrates hand-designed features with machine-learned features to produce more accurate segmentation. The hand-designed features from shallow network (with designable filters) encode the prior-knowledge and context while the machine-learned features from a deep network (with trainable filters) learn the intrinsic features. Both global and local information are combined using these two types of networks that improve the segmentation accuracy

Brain Tumor Diagnosis Support System: A decision Fusion Framework

An important factor in providing effective and efficient therapy for brain tumors is early and accurate detection, which can increase survival rates. Current image-based tumor detection and diagnosis techniques are heavily dependent on interpretation by neuro-specialists and/or radiologists, making the evaluation process time-consuming and prone to human error and subjectivity. Besides, widespread use of MR spectroscopy requires specialized processing and assessment of the data and obvious and fast show of the results as photos or maps for routine medical interpretative of an exam. Automatic brain tumor detection and classification have the potential to offer greater efficiency and predictions that are more accurate. However, the performance accuracy of automatic detection and classification techniques tends to be dependent on the specific image modality and is well known to vary from technique to technique. For this reason, it would be prudent to examine the variations in the execution of these methods to obtain consistently high levels of achievement accuracy. Designing, implementing, and evaluating categorization software is the goal of the suggested framework for discerning various brain tumor types on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using textural features. This thesis introduces a brain tumor detection support system that involves the use of a variety of tumor classifiers. The system is designed as a decision fusion framework that enables these multi-classifier to analyze medical images, such as those obtained from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The fusion procedure is ground on the Dempster-Shafer evidence fusion theory. Numerous experimental scenarios have been implemented to validate the efficiency of the proposed framework. Compared with alternative approaches, the outcomes show that the methodology developed in this thesis demonstrates higher accuracy and higher computational efficiency

State of the Art in Face Recognition

Notwithstanding the tremendous effort to solve the face recognition problem, it is not possible yet to design a face recognition system with a potential close to human performance. New computer vision and pattern recognition approaches need to be investigated. Even new knowledge and perspectives from different fields like, psychology and neuroscience must be incorporated into the current field of face recognition to design a robust face recognition system. Indeed, many more efforts are required to end up with a human like face recognition system. This book tries to make an effort to reduce the gap between the previous face recognition research state and the future state