A new perspective on the Propagation-Separation approach: Taking advantage of the propagation condition

The Propagation-Separation approach is an iterative procedure for pointwise estimation of local constant and local polynomial functions. The estimator is defined as a weighted mean of the observations with data-driven weights. Within homogeneous regions it ensures a similar behavior as non-adaptive smoothing (propagation), while avoiding smoothing among distinct regions (separation). In order to enable a proof of stability of estimates, the authors of the original study introduced an additional memory step aggregating the estimators of the successive iteration steps. Here, we study theoretical properties of the simplified algorithm, where the memory step is omitted. In particular, we introduce a new strategy for the choice of the adaptation parameter yielding propagation and stability for local constant functions with sharp discontinuities.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figure

A Simplified Crossing Fiber Model in Diffusion Weighted Imaging

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) is a vital source of imaging data for identifying anatomical connections in the living human brain that form the substrate for information transfer between brain regions. dMRI can thus play a central role toward our understanding of brain function. The quantitative modeling and analysis of dMRI data deduces the features of neural fibers at the voxel level, such as direction and density. The modeling methods that have been developed range from deterministic to probabilistic approaches. Currently, the Ball-and-Stick model serves as a widely implemented probabilistic approach in the tractography toolbox of the popular FSL software package and FreeSurfer/TRACULA software package. However, estimation of the features of neural fibers is complex under the scenario of two crossing neural fibers, which occurs in a sizeable proportion of voxels within the brain. A Bayesian non-linear regression is adopted, comprised of a mixture of multiple non-linear components. Such models can pose a difficult statistical estimation problem computationally. To make the approach of Ball-and-Stick model more feasible and accurate, we propose a simplified version of Ball-and-Stick model that reduces parameter space dimensionality. This simplified model is vastly more efficient in the terms of computation time required in estimating parameters pertaining to two crossing neural fibers through Bayesian simulation approaches. Moreover, the performance of this new model is comparable or better in terms of bias and estimation variance as compared to existing models

Convergence analysis of estimated parameters for parametric nonlinear strict feedback system with unknown control direction

In this paper, the adaptive control and parameters identification problems are investigated for a class of linearly parametric strict feedback system with unknown control direction. Firstly, by using backstepping design procedure, the adaptive tracking control scheme combined with Nussbaum gain function is proposed. In the controller, the adaptive law of estimated parameters is derived from Lyapunov stability theorem and Nussbaum-type function. All the signals in closed-loop system are proved to be bounded. Secondly, the identification of unknown parameters in the strict feedback system with unknown control direction is studied. By constructing a novel Lyapunov function, a sufficient condition (PE condition), which can guarantee that the parameters estimation converge to the actual values of parameters, is obtained for the first time. Also, it is more simplified than the existing results on PE. Under the PE condition proposed here, it is shown that the parameters estimation errors are convergent to zero asymptotically by using Nussbaum function technique and Barbalat's lemma. Finally, illustrated examples are given to demonstrate the main results

Depth Superresolution using Motion Adaptive Regularization

Spatial resolution of depth sensors is often significantly lower compared to that of conventional optical cameras. Recent work has explored the idea of improving the resolution of depth using higher resolution intensity as a side information. In this paper, we demonstrate that further incorporating temporal information in videos can significantly improve the results. In particular, we propose a novel approach that improves depth resolution, exploiting the space-time redundancy in the depth and intensity using motion-adaptive low-rank regularization. Experiments confirm that the proposed approach substantially improves the quality of the estimated high-resolution depth. Our approach can be a first component in systems using vision techniques that rely on high resolution depth information

MSE bounds for phase estimation in presence of recursive nuisance parameters

The mean squared error (MSE) is commonly used to measure and compare the performance of various phase estimation techniques in communications and signal processing systems. When the received signal contains recursive nuisance parameters, the MSE is extremely difficult to obtain and even the conventional modified Cramér-Rao bound (MCRB) can not be readily applied. In this paper, a recursive MSE bound and its simplified calculation method are proposed to solve the problem. As an application example, an adaptive hybrid antenna array and its associated angle-of-arrival (AoA) estimation technique are presented. The MSE of the AoA estimation is simulated and compared with the recursive MSE bound and MCRB. The results show that the proposed recursive MSE bound provides a tighter lower MSE bound than the recursive MCRB

Efficient Gradient Estimation via Adaptive Sampling and Importance Sampling

Machine learning problems rely heavily on stochastic gradient descent (SGD) for optimization. The effectiveness of SGD is contingent upon accurately estimating gradients from a mini-batch of data samples. Instead of the commonly used uniform sampling, adaptive or importance sampling reduces noise in gradient estimation by forming mini-batches that prioritize crucial data points. Previous research has suggested that data points should be selected with probabilities proportional to their gradient norm. Nevertheless, existing algorithms have struggled to efficiently integrate importance sampling into machine learning frameworks. In this work, we make two contributions. First, we present an algorithm that can incorporate existing importance functions into our framework. Second, we propose a simplified importance function that relies solely on the loss gradient of the output layer. By leveraging our proposed gradient estimation techniques, we observe improved convergence in classification and regression tasks with minimal computational overhead. We validate the effectiveness of our adaptive and importance-sampling approach on image and point-cloud datasets.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figure