24 research outputs found
Genetic embedded matching approach to ground states in continuous-spin systems
Due to an extremely rugged structure of the free energy landscape, the
determination of spin-glass ground states is among the hardest known
optimization problems, found to be NP-hard in the most general case. Owing to
the specific structure of local (free) energy minima, general-purpose
optimization strategies perform relatively poorly on these problems, and a
number of specially tailored optimization techniques have been developed in
particular for the Ising spin glass and similar discrete systems. Here, an
efficient optimization heuristic for the much less discussed case of continuous
spins is introduced, based on the combination of an embedding of Ising spins
into the continuous rotators and an appropriate variant of a genetic algorithm.
Statistical techniques for insuring high reliability in finding (numerically)
exact ground states are discussed, and the method is benchmarked against the
simulated annealing approach.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl
Serial section registration of axonal confocal microscopy datasets for long-range neural circuit reconstruction
ManuscriptIn the context of long-range digital neural circuit reconstruction, this paper investigates an approach for registering axons across histological serial sections. Tracing distinctly labeled axons over large distances allows neuroscientists to study very explicit relationships between the brain's complex interconnects and, for example, diseases or aberrant development. Large scale histological analysis requires, however, that the tissue be cut into sections. In immunohistochemical studies thin sections are easily distorted due to the cutting, preparation, and slide mounting processes. In this work we target the registration of thin serial sections containing axons. Sections are first traced to extract axon centerlines, and these traces are used to define registration landmarks where they intersect section boundaries. The trace data also provides distinguishing information regarding an axon's size and orientation within a section. We propose the use of these features when pairing axons across sections in addition to utilizing the spatial relationships amongst the landmarks. The global rotation and translation of an unregistered section are accounted for using a random sample consensus (RANSAC) based technique. An iterative nonrigid refinement process using B-spline warping is then used to reconnect axons and produce the sought after connectivity information
Decomposition of Geometric Set Systems and Graphs
We study two decomposition problems in combinatorial geometry. The first part
deals with the decomposition of multiple coverings of the plane. We say that a
planar set is cover-decomposable if there is a constant m such that any m-fold
covering of the plane with its translates is decomposable into two disjoint
coverings of the whole plane. Pach conjectured that every convex set is
cover-decomposable. We verify his conjecture for polygons. Moreover, if m is
large enough, we prove that any m-fold covering can even be decomposed into k
coverings. Then we show that the situation is exactly the opposite in 3
dimensions, for any polyhedron and any we construct an m-fold covering of
the space that is not decomposable. We also give constructions that show that
concave polygons are usually not cover-decomposable. We start the first part
with a detailed survey of all results on the cover-decomposability of polygons.
The second part investigates another geometric partition problem, related to
planar representation of graphs. The slope number of a graph G is the smallest
number s with the property that G has a straight-line drawing with edges of at
most s distinct slopes and with no bends. We examine the slope number of
bounded degree graphs. Our main results are that if the maximum degree is at
least 5, then the slope number tends to infinity as the number of vertices
grows but every graph with maximum degree at most 3 can be embedded with only
five slopes. We also prove that such an embedding exists for the related notion
called slope parameter. Finally, we study the planar slope number, defined only
for planar graphs as the smallest number s with the property that the graph has
a straight-line drawing in the plane without any crossings such that the edges
are segments of only s distinct slopes. We show that the planar slope number of
planar graphs with bounded degree is bounded.Comment: This is my PhD thesi
Iterated function systems and shape representation
We propose the use of iterated function systems as an isomorphic shape representation scheme for use in a machine vision environment. A concise description of the basic theory and salient characteristics of iterated function systems is presented and from this we develop a formal framework within which to embed a representation scheme. Concentrating on the problem of obtaining automatically generated two-dimensional encodings we describe implementations of two solutions. The first is based on a deterministic algorithm and makes simplifying assumptions which limit its range of applicability. The second employs a novel formulation of a genetic algorithm and is intended to function with general data input. Keywords: Machine Vision, Shape Representation, Iterated Function Systems, Genetic Algorithms