A Multiscale Pyramid Transform for Graph Signals

Multiscale transforms designed to process analog and discrete-time signals and images cannot be directly applied to analyze high-dimensional data residing on the vertices of a weighted graph, as they do not capture the intrinsic geometric structure of the underlying graph data domain. In this paper, we adapt the Laplacian pyramid transform for signals on Euclidean domains so that it can be used to analyze high-dimensional data residing on the vertices of a weighted graph. Our approach is to study existing methods and develop new methods for the four fundamental operations of graph downsampling, graph reduction, and filtering and interpolation of signals on graphs. Equipped with appropriate notions of these operations, we leverage the basic multiscale constructs and intuitions from classical signal processing to generate a transform that yields both a multiresolution of graphs and an associated multiresolution of a graph signal on the underlying sequence of graphs.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure

Modified CSLBP

Image hashing is an efficient way to handle digital data authentication problem. Image hashing represents quality summarization of image features in compact manner. In this paper, the modified center symmetric local binary pattern (CSLBP) image hashing algorithm is proposed. Unlike CSLBP 16 bin histogram, Modified CSLBP generates 8 bin histogram without compromise on quality to generate compact hash. It has been found that, uniform quantization on a histogram with more bin results in more precision loss. To overcome quantization loss, modified CSLBP generates the two histogram of a four bin. Uniform quantization on a 4 bin histogram results in less precision loss than a 16 bin histogram. The first generated histogram represents the nearest neighbours and second one is for the diagonal neighbours. To enhance quality in terms of discrimination power, different weight factor are used during histogram generation. For the nearest and the diagonal neighbours, two local weight factors are used. One is the Standard Deviation (SD) and other is the Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG). Standard deviation represents a spread of data which captures local variation from mean. LoG is a second order derivative edge detection operator which detects edges well in presence of noise. The proposed algorithm is resilient to the various kinds of attacks. The proposed method is tested on database having malicious and non-malicious images using benchmark like NHD and ROC which confirms theoretical analysis. The experimental results shows good performance of the proposed method for various attacks despite the short hash length

Entropy in Image Analysis III

Image analysis can be applied to rich and assorted scenarios; therefore, the aim of this recent research field is not only to mimic the human vision system. Image analysis is the main methods that computers are using today, and there is body of knowledge that they will be able to manage in a totally unsupervised manner in future, thanks to their artificial intelligence. The articles published in the book clearly show such a future

New Horizons in Time-Domain Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging

Jöbsis was the first to describe the in vivo application of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), also called diffuse optical spectroscopy (DOS). NIRS was originally designed for the clinical monitoring of tissue oxygenation, and today it has also become a useful tool for neuroimaging studies (functional near-infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS). However, difficulties in the selective and quantitative measurements of tissue hemoglobin (Hb), which have been central in the NIRS field for over 40 years, remain to be solved. To overcome these problems, time-domain (TD) and frequency-domain (FD) measurements have been tried. Presently, a wide range of NIRS instruments are available, including commonly available commercial instruments for continuous wave (CW) measurements, based on the modified Beer–Lambert law (steady-state domain measurements). Among these measurements, the TD measurement is the most promising approach, although compared with CW and FD measurements, TD measurements are less common, due to the need for large and expensive instruments with poor temporal resolution and limited dynamic range. However, thanks to technological developments, TD measurements are increasingly being used in research, and also in various clinical settings. This Special Issue highlights issues at the cutting edge of TD DOS and diffuse optical tomography (DOT). It covers all aspects related to TD measurements, including advances in hardware, methodology, the theory of light propagation, and clinical applications

A Decade of Neural Networks: Practical Applications and Prospects

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory Neural Network Workshop, sponsored by NASA and DOD, brings together sponsoring agencies, active researchers, and the user community to formulate a vision for the next decade of neural network research and application prospects. While the speed and computing power of microprocessors continue to grow at an ever-increasing pace, the demand to intelligently and adaptively deal with the complex, fuzzy, and often ill-defined world around us remains to a large extent unaddressed. Powerful, highly parallel computing paradigms such as neural networks promise to have a major impact in addressing these needs. Papers in the workshop proceedings highlight benefits of neural networks in real-world applications compared to conventional computing techniques. Topics include fault diagnosis, pattern recognition, and multiparameter optimization

On Development of Some Soft Computing Based Multiuser Detection Techniques for SDMA–OFDM Wireless Communication System

Space Division Multiple Access(SDMA) based technique as a subclass of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems achieves high spectral efficiency through bandwidth reuse by multiple users. On the other hand, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) mitigates the impairments of the propagation channel. The combination of SDMA and OFDM has emerged as a most competitive technology for future wireless communication system. In the SDMA uplink, multiple users communicate simultaneously with a multiple antenna Base Station (BS) sharing the same frequency band by exploring their unique user specific-special spatial signature. Different Multiuser Detection (MUD) schemes have been proposed at the BS receiver to identify users correctly by mitigating the multiuser interference. However, most of the classical MUDs fail to separate the users signals in the over load scenario, where the number of users exceed the number of receiving antennas. On the other hand, due to exhaustive search mechanism, the optimal Maximum Likelihood (ML) detector is limited by high computational complexity, which increases exponentially with increasing number of simultaneous users. Hence, cost function minimization based Minimum Error Rate (MER) detectors are preferred, which basically minimize the probability of error by iteratively updating receiver’s weights using adaptive algorithms such as Steepest Descent (SD), Conjugate Gradient (CG) etc. The first part of research proposes Optimization Techniques (OTs) aided MER detectors to overcome the shortfalls of the CG based MER detectors. Popular metaheuristic search algorithms like Adaptive Genetic Algorithm (AGA), Adaptive Differential Evolution Algorithm (ADEA) and Invasive Weed Optimization (IWO), which rely on an intelligent search of a large but finite solution space using statistical methods, have been applied for finding the optimal weight vectors for MER MUD. Further, it is observed in an overload SDMA–OFDM system that the channel output phasor constellation often becomes linearly non-separable. With increasing the number of users, the receiver weight optimization task turns out to be more difficult due to the exponentially increased number of dimensions of the weight matrix. As a result, MUD becomes a challenging multidimensional optimization problem. Therefore, signal classification requires a nonlinear solution. Considering this, the second part of research work suggests Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based MUDs on thestandard Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) frameworks fo

Hydroxyapatite nanoparticle injectable hydrogel scaffold to support osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells

Bone loss associated with degenerative disease and trauma is a clinical problem increasing with the aging population. Thus, effective bone augmentation strategies are required; however, many have the disadvantages that they require invasive surgery and often the addition of expensive growth factors to induce osteoblast differentiation. Here, we investigated a Laponite crosslinked, pNIPAMDMAc copolymer (L-pNIPAM-co-DMAc) hydrogel with hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HAPna), which can be maintained as a liquid ex vivo, injected via narrowgauge needle into affected bone, followed by in situ gelation to deliver and induce osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC). L-pNIPAMco-DMAc hydrogels were synthesised and HAPna added post polymerisation. Commercial hMSCs from one donor (Lonza) were incorporated in liquid hydrogel, the mixture solidified and cultured for up to 6 weeks. Viability of hMSCs was maintained within hydrogel constructs containing 0.5 mg/mL HAPna. SEM analysis demonstrated matrix deposition in cellular hydrogels which were absent in acellular controls. A significant increase in storage modulus (G’) was observed in cellular hydrogels with 0.5 mg/mL HAPna. Semi-quantitative immunohistochemistry and histological analysis demonstrated that bone differentiation markers and collagen deposition was induced within 48 h, with increased calcium deposition with time. The thermally triggered hydrogel system, described here, was sufficient without the need of additional growth factors or osteogenic media to induce osteogenic differentiation of commercial hMSCs. Preliminary data presented here will be expanded on multiple patient samples to ensure differentiation is seen in these samples. This system could potentially reduce treatment costs and simplify the tre

Mathematical and Data-driven Pattern Representation with Applications in Image Processing, Computer Graphics, and Infinite Dimensional Dynamical Data Mining

Patterns represent the spatial or temporal regularities intrinsic to various phenomena in nature, society, art, and science. From rigid ones with well-defined generative rules to flexible ones implied by unstructured data, patterns can be assigned to a spectrum. On one extreme, patterns are completely described by algebraic systems where each individual pattern is obtained by repeatedly applying simple operations on primitive elements. On the other extreme, patterns are perceived as visual or frequency regularities without any prior knowledge of the underlying mechanisms. In this thesis, we aim at demonstrating some mathematical techniques for representing patterns traversing the aforementioned spectrum, which leads to qualitative analysis of the patterns' properties and quantitative prediction of the modeled behaviors from various perspectives. We investigate lattice patterns from material science, shape patterns from computer graphics, submanifold patterns encountered in point cloud processing, color perception patterns applied in underwater image processing, dynamic patterns from spatial-temporal data, and low-rank patterns exploited in medical image reconstruction. For different patterns and based on their dependence on structured or unstructured data, we present suitable mathematical representations using techniques ranging from group theory to deep neural networks.Ph.D

IST Austria Thesis

Deep neural networks have established a new standard for data-dependent feature extraction pipelines in the Computer Vision literature. Despite their remarkable performance in the standard supervised learning scenario, i.e. when models are trained with labeled data and tested on samples that follow a similar distribution, neural networks have been shown to struggle with more advanced generalization abilities, such as transferring knowledge across visually different domains, or generalizing to new unseen combinations of known concepts. In this thesis we argue that, in contrast to the usual black-box behavior of neural networks, leveraging more structured internal representations is a promising direction for tackling such problems. In particular, we focus on two forms of structure. First, we tackle modularity: We show that (i) compositional architectures are a natural tool for modeling reasoning tasks, in that they efficiently capture their combinatorial nature, which is key for generalizing beyond the compositions seen during training. We investigate how to to learn such models, both formally and experimentally, for the task of abstract visual reasoning. Then, we show that (ii) in some settings, modularity allows us to efficiently break down complex tasks into smaller, easier, modules, thereby improving computational efficiency; We study this behavior in the context of generative models for colorization, as well as for small objects detection. Secondly, we investigate the inherently layered structure of representations learned by neural networks, and analyze its role in the context of transfer learning and domain adaptation across visually dissimilar domains