Rethinking the transfer learning for FCN based polyp segmentation in colonoscopy

Besides the complex nature of colonoscopy frames with intrinsic frame formation artefacts such as light reflections and the diversity of polyp types/shapes, the publicly available polyp segmentation training datasets are limited, small and imbalanced. In this case, the automated polyp segmentation using a deep neural network remains an open challenge due to the overfitting of training on small datasets. We proposed a simple yet effective polyp segmentation pipeline that couples the segmentation (FCN) and classification (CNN) tasks. We find the effectiveness of interactive weight transfer between dense and coarse vision tasks that mitigates the overfitting in learning. And It motivates us to design a new training scheme within our segmentation pipeline. Our method is evaluated on CVC-EndoSceneStill and Kvasir-SEG datasets. It achieves 4.34% and 5.70% Polyp-IoU improvements compared to the state-of-the-art methods on the EndoSceneStill and Kvasir-SEG datasets, respectively.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, submit versio

Identification and Functional Characterization of Squamosa Promoter Binding Protein-Like Gene TaSPL16 in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important crops in the world. Squamosa promoter binding protein-like (SPL) proteins are plant-specific transcript factors and play critical roles in plant growth and development. The functions of many SPL gene family members were well characterized in Arabidopsis and rice, in contrast, research on wheat SPL genes is lagging behind. In this study, we cloned and characterized TaSPL16, an orthologous gene of rice OsSPL16, in wheat. Three TaSPL16 homoeologs are located on the short arms of chromosome 7A, 7B, and 7D, and share more than 96% sequence identity with each other. All the TaSPL16 homoeologs have three exons and two introns, with a miR156 binding site in their last exons. They encode putative proteins of 407, 409, and 414 amino acid residues, respectively. Subcellular localization showed TaSPL16 distribution in the cell nucleus, and transcription activity of TaSPL16 was validated in yeast. Analysis of the spatiotemporal expression profile showed that TaSPL16 is highly expressed in young developing panicles, lowly expressed in developing seeds and almost undetectable in vegetative tissues. Ectopic expression of TaSPL16 in Arabidopsis causes a delay in the emergence of vegetative leaves (3–4 days late), promotes early flowering (5–7 days early), increases organ size, and affects yield-related traits. These results demonstrated the regulatory roles of TaSPL16 in plant growth and development as well as seed yield. Our findings enrich the existing knowledge on SPL genes in wheat and provide valuable information for further investigating the effects of TaSPL16 on plant architecture and yield-related traits of wheat

Optimization heuristic solutions, how good can they be? : With empirical applications in location problems

Combinatorial optimization problems, are one of the most important types of problems in operational research. Heuristic and metaheuristics algorithms are widely applied to find a good solution. However, a common problem is that these algorithms do not guarantee that the solution will coincide with the optimum and, hence, many solutions to real world OR-problems are afflicted with an uncertainty about the quality of the solution. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the usability of statistical bounds to evaluate the quality of heuristic solutions applied to large combinatorial problems. The contributions of this thesis are both methodological and empirical. From a methodological point of view, the usefulness of statistical bounds on p-median problems is thoroughly investigated. The statistical bounds have good performance in providing informative quality assessment under appropriate parameter settings. Also, they outperform the commonly used Lagrangian bounds. It is demonstrated that the statistical bounds are shown to be comparable with the deterministic bounds in quadratic assignment problems. As to empirical research, environment pollution has become a worldwide problem, and transportation can cause a great amount of pollution. A new method for calculating and comparing the CO2-emissions of online and brick-and-mortar retailing is proposed. It leads to the conclusion that online retailing has significantly lesser CO2-emissions. Another problem is that the Swedish regional division is under revision and the border effect to public service accessibility is concerned of both residents and politicians. After analysis, it is shown that borders hinder the optimal location of public services and consequently the highest achievable economic and social utility may not be attained.Kombinatoriska optimeringsproblem, är en av de viktigaste typerna av problem i operationsanalys (OR). Heuristiska och metaheuristiska algoritmer tillämpas allmänt för att hitta lösningar med hög kvalitet. Ett vanligt problem är dock att dessa algoritmer inte garanterar optimala lösningar och sålunda kan det finnas osäkerhet i kvaliteten på lösningar på tillämpade operationsanalytiska problem. Huvudsyftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka användbarheten av statistiska konfidensintervall för att utvärdera kvaliteten på heuristiska lösningar då de tillämpas på stora kombinatoriska optimeringsproblem. Bidragen från denna avhandling är både metodologiska och empiriska. Ur metodologisk synvinkel har nyttan av statistiska konfidensintervall för ett lokaliseringsproblem (p-median problemet) undersökts. Statistiska konfidensintervall fungerar väl för att tillhandahålla information om lösningens kvalitet vid rätt implementering av problemen. Statistiska konfidensintervall överträffar även intervallen som erhålls vid den vanligen använda Lagrange-relaxation. I avhandlingen visas även på att metoden med statistiska konfidensintervall är fungerar väl jämfört med många andra deterministiska intervall i ett mer komplexa optimeringsproblem som det kvadratiska tilldelningsproblemet. P-median problemet och de statistiska konfidensintervallen har implementerats empiriskt för att beräkna och jämföra e-handelns och traditionell handels CO2-utsläpp från transporter, vilken visar att ehandel medför betydligt mindre CO2-utsläpp. Ett annat lokaliseringsproblem som analyserats empiriskt är hur förändringar av den regionala administrativa indelningen av Sverige, vilket är en aktuell och pågående samhällsdiskussion, påverkar medborgarnas tillgänglighet till offentlig service. Analysen visar att regionala administrativa iv gränserna lett till en suboptimal placering av offentliga tjänster. Därmed finns en risk att den samhällsekonomiska nyttan av dessa tjänster är suboptimerad

Optimization heuristic solutions, how good can they be? : With empirical applications in location problems

Combinatorial optimization problems, are one of the most important types of problems in operational research. Heuristic and metaheuristics algorithms are widely applied to find a good solution. However, a common problem is that these algorithms do not guarantee that the solution will coincide with the optimum and, hence, many solutions to real world OR-problems are afflicted with an uncertainty about the quality of the solution. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the usability of statistical bounds to evaluate the quality of heuristic solutions applied to large combinatorial problems. The contributions of this thesis are both methodological and empirical. From a methodological point of view, the usefulness of statistical bounds on p-median problems is thoroughly investigated. The statistical bounds have good performance in providing informative quality assessment under appropriate parameter settings. Also, they outperform the commonly used Lagrangian bounds. It is demonstrated that the statistical bounds are shown to be comparable with the deterministic bounds in quadratic assignment problems. As to empirical research, environment pollution has become a worldwide problem, and transportation can cause a great amount of pollution. A new method for calculating and comparing the CO2-emissions of online and brick-and-mortar retailing is proposed. It leads to the conclusion that online retailing has significantly lesser CO2-emissions. Another problem is that the Swedish regional division is under revision and the border effect to public service accessibility is concerned of both residents and politicians. After analysis, it is shown that borders hinder the optimal location of public services and consequently the highest achievable economic and social utility may not be attained.Kombinatoriska optimeringsproblem, är en av de viktigaste typerna av problem i operationsanalys (OR). Heuristiska och metaheuristiska algoritmer tillämpas allmänt för att hitta lösningar med hög kvalitet. Ett vanligt problem är dock att dessa algoritmer inte garanterar optimala lösningar och sålunda kan det finnas osäkerhet i kvaliteten på lösningar på tillämpade operationsanalytiska problem. Huvudsyftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka användbarheten av statistiska konfidensintervall för att utvärdera kvaliteten på heuristiska lösningar då de tillämpas på stora kombinatoriska optimeringsproblem. Bidragen från denna avhandling är både metodologiska och empiriska. Ur metodologisk synvinkel har nyttan av statistiska konfidensintervall för ett lokaliseringsproblem (p-median problemet) undersökts. Statistiska konfidensintervall fungerar väl för att tillhandahålla information om lösningens kvalitet vid rätt implementering av problemen. Statistiska konfidensintervall överträffar även intervallen som erhålls vid den vanligen använda Lagrange-relaxation. I avhandlingen visas även på att metoden med statistiska konfidensintervall är fungerar väl jämfört med många andra deterministiska intervall i ett mer komplexa optimeringsproblem som det kvadratiska tilldelningsproblemet. P-median problemet och de statistiska konfidensintervallen har implementerats empiriskt för att beräkna och jämföra e-handelns och traditionell handels CO2-utsläpp från transporter, vilken visar att ehandel medför betydligt mindre CO2-utsläpp. Ett annat lokaliseringsproblem som analyserats empiriskt är hur förändringar av den regionala administrativa indelningen av Sverige, vilket är en aktuell och pågående samhällsdiskussion, påverkar medborgarnas tillgänglighet till offentlig service. Analysen visar att regionala administrativa iv gränserna lett till en suboptimal placering av offentliga tjänster. Därmed finns en risk att den samhällsekonomiska nyttan av dessa tjänster är suboptimerad

Statistical bound of genetic solutions to quadratic assignment problems

Quadratic assignment problems (QAPs) are commonly solved by heuristic methods, where the optimum is sought iteratively. Heuristics are known to provide good solutions but the quality of the solutions, i.e., the confidence interval of the solution is unknown. This paper uses statistical optimum estimation techniques (SOETs) to assess the quality of Genetic algorithm solutions for QAPs. We examine the functioning of different SOETs regarding biasness, coverage rate and length of interval, and then we compare the SOET lower bound with deterministic ones. The commonly used deterministic bounds are confined to only a few algorithms. We show that, the Jackknife estimators have better performance than Weibull estimators, and when the number of heuristic solutions is as large as 100, higher order JK-estimators perform better than lower order ones. Compared with the deterministic bounds, the SOET lower bound performs significantly better than most deterministic lower bounds and is comparable with the best deterministic ones.

Statistical bound of genetic solutions to quadratic assignment problems

Quadratic assignment problems (QAPs) are commonly solved by heuristic methods, where the optimum is sought iteratively. Heuristics are known to provide good solutions but the quality of the solutions, i.e., the confidence interval of the solution is unknown. This paper uses statistical optimum estimation techniques (SOETs) to assess the quality of Genetic algorithm solutions for QAPs. We examine the functioning of different SOETs regarding biasness, coverage rate and length of interval, and then we compare the SOET lower bound with deterministic ones. The commonly used deterministic bounds are confined to only a few algorithms. We show that, the Jackknife estimators have better performance than Weibull estimators, and when the number of heuristic solutions is as large as 100, higher order JK-estimators perform better than lower order ones. Compared with the deterministic bounds, the SOET lower bound performs significantly better than most deterministic lower bounds and is comparable with the best deterministic ones.

Testing for Seasonal Unit Roots when Residuals Contain Serial Correlations under HEGY Test Framework

This paper introduces a corrected test statistic for testing seasonal unit roots when residuals contain serial correlations, based on the HEGY test proposed by Hylleberg,Engle, Granger and Yoo (1990). The serial correlations in the residuals of test regressionare accommodated by making corrections to the commonly used HEGY t statistics. Theasymptotic distributions of the corrected t statistics are free from nuisance parameters.The size and power properties of the corrected statistics for quarterly and montly data are investigated. Based on our simulations, the corrected statistics for monthly data havemore power compared with the commonly used HEGY test statistics, but they also have size distortions when there are strong negative seasonal correlations in the residuals.Preprint</p

On statistical bounds of heuristic solutions to location problems

Solutions to combinatorial optimization problems, such as problems of locating facilities, frequently rely on heuristics to minimize the objective function. The optimum is sought iteratively and a criterion is needed to decide when the procedure (almost) attains it. Pre-setting the number of iterations dominates in OR applications, which implies that the quality of the solution cannot be ascertained. A small, almost dormant, branch of the literature suggests using statistical principles to estimate the minimum and its bounds as a tool to decide upon stopping and evaluating the quality of the solution. In this paper we examine the functioning of statistical bounds obtained from four different estimators by using simulated annealing on p-median test problems taken from Beasley’s OR-library. We find the Weibull estimator and the 2nd order Jackknife estimator preferable and the requirement of sample size to be about 10 being much less than the current recommendation. However, reliable statistical bounds are found to depend critically on a sample of heuristic solutions of high quality and we give a simple statistic useful for checking the quality. We end the paper with an illustration on using statistical bounds in a problem of locating some 70 distribution centers of the Swedish Post in one Swedish region.

A stopping rule while searching for optimal solution of facility-location

Solutions to combinatorial optimization, such as p-median problems of locating facilities, frequently rely on heuristics to minimize the objective function. The minimum is sought iteratively and a criterion is needed to decide when the procedure (almost) attains it. However, pre-setting the number of iterations dominates in OR applications, which implies that the quality of the solution cannot be ascertained. A small branch of the literature suggests using statistical principles to estimate the minimum and use the estimate for either stopping or evaluating the quality of the solution. In this paper we use test-problems taken from Baesley's OR-library and apply Simulated Annealing on these p-median problems. We do this for the purpose of comparing suggested methods of minimum estimation and, eventually, provide a recommendation for practioners. An illustration ends the paper being a problem of locating some 70 distribution centers of the Swedish Post in a region