Towards prevention of sportsmen burnout : Formal analysis of sub-optimal tournament scheduling

Funding Statement: The authors are grateful to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia for funding this work through the Vice Deanship of Scientific Research Chairs: Chair of Pervasive and Mobile Computing.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

White Blood Cells Classification Using Entropy-Controlled Deep Features Optimization

White blood cells (WBCs) constitute an essential part of the human immune system. The correct identification of WBC subtypes is critical in the diagnosis of leukemia, a kind of blood cancer defined by the aberrant proliferation of malignant leukocytes in the bone marrow. The traditional approach of classifying WBCs, which involves the visual analysis of blood smear images, is labor-intensive and error-prone. Modern approaches based on deep convolutional neural networks provide significant results for this type of image categorization, but have high processing and implementation costs owing to very large feature sets. This paper presents an improved hybrid approach for efficient WBC subtype classification. First, optimum deep features are extracted from enhanced and segmented WBC images using transfer learning on pre-trained deep neural networks, i.e., DenseNet201 and Darknet53. The serially fused feature vector is then filtered using an entropy-controlled marine predator algorithm (ECMPA). This nature-inspired meta-heuristic optimization algorithm selects the most dominant features while discarding the weak ones. The reduced feature vector is classified with multiple baseline classifiers with various kernel settings. The proposed methodology is validated on a public dataset of 5000 synthetic images that correspond to five different subtypes of WBCs. The system achieves an overall average accuracy of 99.9% with more than 95% reduction in the size of the feature vector. The feature selection algorithm also demonstrates better convergence performance as compared to classical meta-heuristic algorithms. The proposed method also demonstrates a comparable performance with several existing works on WBC classification

Prediction of Critical Currents for a Diluted Square Lattice Using Artificial Neural Networks

Studying critical currents, critical temperatures, and critical fields carries substantial importance in the field of superconductivity. In this work, we study critical currents in the current–voltage characteristics of a diluted-square lattice on an Nb film. Our measurements are based on a commercially available Physical Properties Measurement System, which may prove time consuming and costly for repeated measurements for a wide range of parameters. We therefore propose a technique based on artificial neural networks to facilitate extrapolation of these curves for unforeseen values of temperature and magnetic fields. We demonstrate that our proposed algorithm predicts the curves with an immaculate precision and minimal overhead, which may as well be adopted for prediction in other types of regular and diluted lattices. In addition, we present a detailed comparison between three artificial neural networks architectures with respect to their prediction efficiency, computation time, and number of iterations to converge to an optimal solution

Skin lesion segmentation and multiclass classification using deep learning features and improved moth flame optimization

Article no. 811Manual diagnosis of skin cancer is time-consuming and expensive; therefore, it is essential to develop automated diagnostics methods with the ability to classify multiclass skin lesions with greater accuracy. We propose a fully automated approach for multiclass skin lesion segmentation and classification by using the most discriminant deep features. First, the input images are initially enhanced using local color-controlled histogram intensity values (LCcHIV). Next, saliency is estimated using a novel Deep Saliency Segmentation method, which uses a custom convolutional neural network (CNN) of ten layers. The generated heat map is converted into a binary image using a thresholding function. Next, the segmented color lesion images are used for feature extraction by a deep pre-trained CNN model. To avoid the curse of dimensionality, we implement an improved moth flame optimization (IMFO) algorithm to select the most discriminant features. The resultant features are fused using a multiset maximum correlation analysis (MMCA) and classified using the Kernel Extreme Learning Machine (KELM) classifier. The segmentation performance of the proposed methodology is analyzed on ISBI 2016, ISBI 2017, ISIC 2018, and PH2 datasets, achieving an accuracy of 95.38%, 95.79%, 92.69%, and 98.70%, respectively. The classification performance is evaluated on the HAM10000 dataset and achieved an accuracy of 90.67%. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed methods, we present a comparison with the state-of-the-art techniquesTaikomosios informatikos katedraVytauto Didžiojo universiteta

Joint Placement and Device Association of UAV Base Stations in IoT Networks

Drone base stations (DBSs) have received significant research interest in recent years. They provide a flexible and cost-effective solution to improve the coverage, connectivity, quality of service (QoS), and energy efficiency of large-area Internet of Things (IoT) networks. However, as DBSs are costly and power-limited devices, they require an efficient scheme for their deployment in practical networks. This work proposes a realistic mathematical model for the joint optimization problem of DBS placement and IoT users’ assignment in a massive IoT network scenario. The optimization goal is to maximize the connectivity of IoT users by utilizing the minimum number of DBS, while satisfying practical network constraints. Such an optimization problem is NP-hard, and the optimal solution has a complexity exponential to the number of DBSs and IoT users in the network. Furthermore, this work also proposes a linearization scheme and a low-complexity heuristic to solve the problem in polynomial time. The simulations are performed for a number of network scenarios, and demonstrate that the proposed heuristic is numerically accurate and performs close to the optimal solution

A Hybrid Preprocessor DE-ABC for Efficient Skin-Lesion Segmentation with Improved Contrast

Rapid advancements and the escalating necessity of autonomous algorithms in medical imaging require efficient models to accomplish tasks such as segmentation and classification. However, there exists a significant dependency on the image quality of datasets when using these models. Appreciable improvements to enhance datasets for efficient image analysis have been noted in the past. In addition, deep learning and machine learning are vastly employed in this field. However, even after the advent of these advanced techniques, a significant space exists for new research. Recent research works indicate the vast applicability of preprocessing techniques in segmentation tasks. Contrast stretching is one of the preprocessing techniques used to enhance a region of interest. We propose a novel hybrid meta-heuristic preprocessor (DE-ABC), which optimises the decision variables used in the contrast-enhancement transformation function. We validated the efficiency of the preprocessor against some state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms. Publicly available skin-lesion datasets such as 2, ISIC-2016, ISIC-2017, and ISIC-2018 were employed. We used Jaccard and the dice coefficient as performance matrices; at the maximum, the proposed model improved the dice coefficient from 93.56% to 94.09%. Cross-comparisons of segmentation results with the original datasets versus the contrast-stretched datasets validate that DE-ABC enhances the efficiency of segmentation algorithms

Automatic Scene Recognition through Acoustic Classification for Behavioral Robotics

Classification of complex acoustic scenes under real time scenarios is an active domain which has engaged several researchers lately form the machine learning community. A variety of techniques have been proposed for acoustic patterns or scene classification including natural soundscapes such as rain/thunder, and urban soundscapes such as restaurants/streets, etc. In this work, we present a framework for automatic acoustic classification for behavioral robotics. Motivated by several texture classification algorithms used in computer vision, a modified feature descriptor for sound is proposed which incorporates a combination of 1-D local ternary patterns (1D-LTP) and baseline method Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). The extracted feature vector is later classified using a multi-class support vector machine (SVM), which is selected as a base classifier. The proposed method is validated on two standard benchmark datasets i.e., DCASE and RWCP and achieves accuracies of 97.38 % and 94.10 % , respectively. A comparative analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme performs exceptionally well compared to other feature descriptors

A framework of human detection and action recognition based on uniform segmentation and combination of Euclidean distance and joint entropy-based features selection

Abstract Human activity monitoring in the video sequences is an intriguing computer vision domain which incorporates colossal applications, e.g., surveillance systems, human-computer interaction, and traffic control systems. In this research, our primary focus is in proposing a hybrid strategy for efficient classification of human activities from a given video sequence. The proposed method integrates four major steps: (a) segment the moving objects by fusing novel uniform segmentation and expectation maximization, (b) extract a new set of fused features using local binary patterns with histogram oriented gradient and Harlick features, (c) feature selection by novel Euclidean distance and joint entropy-PCA-based method, and (d) feature classification using multi-class support vector machine. The three benchmark datasets (MIT, CAVIAR, and BMW-10) are used for training the classifier for human classification; and for testing, we utilized multi-camera pedestrian videos along with MSR Action dataset, INRIA, and CASIA dataset. Additionally, the results are also validated using dataset recorded by our research group. For action recognition, four publicly available datasets are selected such as Weizmann, KTH, UIUC, and Muhavi to achieve recognition rates of 95.80, 99.30, 99, and 99.40%, respectively, which confirm the authenticity of our proposed work. Promising results are achieved in terms of greater precision compared to existing techniques

A New Statistical Features Based Approach for Bearing Fault Diagnosis Using Vibration Signals

In condition based maintenance, different signal processing techniques are used to sense the faults through the vibration and acoustic emission signals, received from the machinery. These signal processing approaches mostly utilise time, frequency, and time-frequency domain analysis. The features obtained are later integrated with the different machine learning techniques to classify the faults into different categories. In this work, different statistical features of vibration signals in time and frequency domains are studied for the detection and localisation of faults in the roller bearings. These are later classified into healthy, outer race fault, inner race fault, and ball fault classes. The statistical features including skewness, kurtosis, average and root mean square values of time domain vibration signals are considered. These features are extracted from the second derivative of the time domain vibration signals and power spectral density of vibration signals. The vibration signal is also converted to the frequency domain and the same features are extracted. All three feature sets are concatenated, creating the time, frequency and spectral power domain feature vectors. These feature vectors are finally fed into the K- nearest neighbour, support vector machine and kernel linear discriminant analysis for the detection and classification of bearing faults. With the proposed method, the reduction percentage of more than 95% percent is achieved, which not only reduces the computational burden but also the classification time. Simulation results show that the signals are classified to achieve an average accuracy of 99.13% using KLDA and 96.64% using KNN classifiers. The results are also compared with the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) features and Fourier transform features without extracting any statistical information, which are two of the most widely used approaches in the literature. To gain a certain level of confidence in the classification results, a detailed statistical analysis is also provided

Reversible integer wavelet transform for blind image hiding method

<div><p>In this article, a blind data hiding reversible methodology to embed the secret data for hiding purpose into cover image is proposed. The key advantage of this research work is to resolve the privacy and secrecy issues raised during the data transmission over the internet. Firstly, data is decomposed into sub-bands using the integer wavelets. For decomposition, the Fresnelet transform is utilized which encrypts the secret data by choosing a unique key parameter to construct a dummy pattern. The dummy pattern is then embedded into an approximated sub-band of the cover image. Our proposed method reveals high-capacity and great imperceptibility of the secret embedded data. With the utilization of family of integer wavelets, the proposed novel approach becomes more efficient for hiding and retrieving process. It retrieved the secret hidden data from the embedded data blindly, without the requirement of original cover image.</p></div