Semi-blind speech-music separation using sparsity and continuity priors

In this paper we propose an approach for the problem of single channel source separation of speech and music signals. Our approach is based on representing each source's power spectral density using dictionaries and nonlinearly projecting the mixture signal spectrum onto the combined span of the dictionary entries. We encourage sparsity and continuity of the dictionary coefficients using penalty terms (or log-priors) in an optimization framework. We propose to use a novel coordinate descent technique for optimization, which nicely handles nonnegativity constraints and nonquadratic penalty terms. We use an adaptive Wiener filter, and spectral subtraction to reconstruct both of the sources from the mixture data after corresponding power spectral densities (PSDs) are estimated for each source. Using conventional metrics, we measure the performance of the system on simulated mixtures of single person speech and piano music sources. The results indicate that the proposed method is a promising technique for low speech-to-music ratio conditions and that sparsity and continuity priors help improve the performance of the proposed system

Tensor Analysis and Fusion of Multimodal Brain Images

Current high-throughput data acquisition technologies probe dynamical systems with different imaging modalities, generating massive data sets at different spatial and temporal resolutions posing challenging problems in multimodal data fusion. A case in point is the attempt to parse out the brain structures and networks that underpin human cognitive processes by analysis of different neuroimaging modalities (functional MRI, EEG, NIRS etc.). We emphasize that the multimodal, multi-scale nature of neuroimaging data is well reflected by a multi-way (tensor) structure where the underlying processes can be summarized by a relatively small number of components or "atoms". We introduce Markov-Penrose diagrams - an integration of Bayesian DAG and tensor network notation in order to analyze these models. These diagrams not only clarify matrix and tensor EEG and fMRI time/frequency analysis and inverse problems, but also help understand multimodal fusion via Multiway Partial Least Squares and Coupled Matrix-Tensor Factorization. We show here, for the first time, that Granger causal analysis of brain networks is a tensor regression problem, thus allowing the atomic decomposition of brain networks. Analysis of EEG and fMRI recordings shows the potential of the methods and suggests their use in other scientific domains.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Proceedings of the IEE