Showing papers in "Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience in 2018"

Deep Learning for Computer Vision: A Brief Review.

Abstract: Over the last years deep learning methods have been shown to outperform previous state-of-the-art machine learning techniques in several fields, with computer vision being one of the most prominent cases. This review paper provides a brief overview of some of the most significant deep learning schemes used in computer vision problems, that is, Convolutional Neural Networks, Deep Boltzmann Machines and Deep Belief Networks, and Stacked Denoising Autoencoders. A brief account of their history, structure, advantages, and limitations is given, followed by a description of their applications in various computer vision tasks, such as object detection, face recognition, action and activity recognition, and human pose estimation. Finally, a brief overview is given of future directions in designing deep learning schemes for computer vision problems and the challenges involved therein.

Student Engagement Predictions in an e-Learning System and Their Impact on Student Course Assessment Scores

Abstract: Several challenges are associated with e-learning systems, the most significant of which is the lack of student motivation in various course activities and for various course materials. In this study, we used machine learning (ML) algorithms to identify low-engagement students in a social science course at the Open University (OU) to assess the effect of engagement on student performance. The input variables of the study included highest education level, final results, score on the assessment, and the number of clicks on virtual learning environment (VLE) activities, which included dataplus, forumng, glossary, oucollaborate, oucontent, resources, subpages, homepage, and URL during the first course assessment. The output variable was the student level of engagement in the various activities. To predict low-engagement students, we applied several ML algorithms to the dataset. Using these algorithms, trained models were first obtained; then, the accuracy and kappa values of the models were compared. The results demonstrated that the J48, decision tree, JRIP, and gradient-boosted classifiers exhibited better performance in terms of the accuracy, kappa value, and recall compared to the other tested models. Based on these findings, we developed a dashboard to facilitate instructor at the OU. These models can easily be incorporated into VLE systems to help instructors evaluate student engagement during VLE courses with regard to different activities and materials and to provide additional interventions for students in advance of their final exam. Furthermore, this study examined the relationship between student engagement and the course assessment score.

Multilayer Hybrid Deep-Learning Method for Waste Classification and Recycling.

Abstract: This study proposes a multilayer hybrid deep-learning system (MHS) to automatically sort waste disposed of by individuals in the urban public area. This system deploys a high-resolution camera to capture waste image and sensors to detect other useful feature information. The MHS uses a CNN-based algorithm to extract image features and a multilayer perceptrons (MLP) method to consolidate image features and other feature information to classify wastes as recyclable or the others. The MHS is trained and validated against the manually labelled items, achieving overall classification accuracy higher than 90% under two different testing scenarios, which significantly outperforms a reference CNN-based method relying on image-only inputs.

Medical Image Classification Based on Deep Features Extracted by Deep Model and Statistic Feature Fusion with Multilayer Perceptron.

Abstract: Medical image classification is a key technique of Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems. Traditional methods rely mainly on the shape, color, and/or texture features as well as their combinations, most of which are problem-specific and have shown to be complementary in medical images, which leads to a system that lacks the ability to make representations of high-level problem domain concepts and that has poor model generalization ability. Recent deep learning methods provide an effective way to construct an end-to-end model that can compute final classification labels with the raw pixels of medical images. However, due to the high resolution of the medical images and the small dataset size, deep learning models suffer from high computational costs and limitations in the model layers and channels. To solve these problems, in this paper, we propose a deep learning model that integrates Coding Network with Multilayer Perceptron (CNMP), which combines high-level features that are extracted from a deep convolutional neural network and some selected traditional features. The construction of the proposed model includes the following steps. First, we train a deep convolutional neural network as a coding network in a supervised manner, and the result is that it can code the raw pixels of medical images into feature vectors that represent high-level concepts for classification. Second, we extract a set of selected traditional features based on background knowledge of medical images. Finally, we design an efficient model that is based on neural networks to fuse the different feature groups obtained in the first and second step. We evaluate the proposed approach on two benchmark medical image datasets: HIS2828 and ISIC2017. We achieve an overall classification accuracy of 90.1% and 90.2%, respectively, which are higher than the current successful methods.

A Classifier Graph Based Recurring Concept Detection and Prediction Approach.

Abstract: It is common in real-world data streams that previously seen concepts will reappear, which suggests a unique kind of concept drift, known as recurring concepts. Unfortunately, most of existing algorithms do not take full account of this case. Motivated by this challenge, a novel paradigm was proposed for capturing and exploiting recurring concepts in data streams. It not only incorporates a distribution-based change detector for handling concept drift but also captures recurring concept by storing recurring concepts in a classifier graph. The possibility of detecting recurring drifts allows reusing previously learnt models and enhancing the overall learning performance. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world data streams reveal that the approach performs significantly better than the state-of-the-art algorithms, especially when concepts reappear.

A Modified Sine-Cosine Algorithm Based on Neighborhood Search and Greedy Levy Mutation

Abstract: For the deficiency of the basic sine-cosine algorithm in dealing with global optimization problems such as the low solution precision and the slow convergence speed, a new improved sine-cosine algorithm is proposed in this paper. The improvement involves three optimization strategies. Firstly, the method of exponential decreasing conversion parameter and linear decreasing inertia weight is adopted to balance the global exploration and local development ability of the algorithm. Secondly, it uses the random individuals near the optimal individuals to replace the optimal individuals in the primary algorithm, which allows the algorithm to easily jump out of the local optimum and increases the search range effectively. Finally, the greedy Levy mutation strategy is used for the optimal individuals to enhance the local development ability of the algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively avoid falling into the local optimum, and it has faster convergence speed and higher optimization accuracy.

A Two-Stream Deep Fusion Framework for High-Resolution Aerial Scene Classification.

Abstract: One of the challenging problems in understanding high-resolution remote sensing images is aerial scene classification A well-designed feature representation method and classifier can improve classification accuracy In this paper, we construct a new two-stream deep architecture for aerial scene classification First, we use two pretrained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as feature extractor to learn deep features from the original aerial image and the processed aerial image through saliency detection, respectively Second, two feature fusion strategies are adopted to fuse the two different types of deep convolutional features extracted by the original RGB stream and the saliency stream Finally, we use the extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier for final classification with the fused features The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is tested on four challenging datasets: UC-Merced dataset with 21 scene categories, WHU-RS dataset with 19 scene categories, AID dataset with 30 scene categories, and NWPU-RESISC45 dataset with 45 challenging scene categories The experimental results demonstrate that our architecture gets a significant classification accuracy improvement over all state-of-the-art references

Deep Learning Methods for Underwater Target Feature Extraction and Recognition

Abstract: The classification and recognition technology of underwater acoustic signal were always an important research content in the field of underwater acoustic signal processing. Currently, wavelet transform, Hilbert-Huang transform, and Mel frequency cepstral coefficients are used as a method of underwater acoustic signal feature extraction. In this paper, a method for feature extraction and identification of underwater noise data based on CNN and ELM is proposed. An automatic feature extraction method of underwater acoustic signals is proposed using depth convolution network. An underwater target recognition classifier is based on extreme learning machine. Although convolution neural networks can execute both feature extraction and classification, their function mainly relies on a full connection layer, which is trained by gradient descent-based; the generalization ability is limited and suboptimal, so an extreme learning machine ELM was used in classification stage. Firstly, CNN learns deep and robust features, followed by the removing of the fully connected layers. Then ELM fed with the CNN features is used as the classifier to conduct an excellent classification. Experiments on the actual data set of civil ships obtained 93.04% recognition rate; compared to the traditional Mel frequency cepstral coefficients and Hilbert-Huang feature, recognition rate greatly improved.

Blind Channel and Data Estimation Using Fuzzy Logic-Empowered Opposite Learning-Based Mutant Particle Swarm Optimization

Abstract: Multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) technology is one of the latest technologies to enhance the capacity of the channel as well as the service quality of the communication system. By using the MIMO technology at the physical layer, the estimation of the data and the channel is performed based on the principle of maximum likelihood. For this purpose, the continuous and discrete fuzzy logic-empowered opposite learning-based mutant particle swarm optimization (FL-OLMPSO) algorithm is used over the Rayleigh fading channel in three levels. The data and the channel populations are prepared during the first level of the algorithm, while the channel parameters are estimated in the second level of the algorithm by using the continuous FL-OLMPSO. After determining the channel parameters, the transmitted symbols are evaluated in the 3rd level of the algorithm by using the channel parameters along with the discrete FL-OLMPSO. To enhance the convergence rate of the FL-OLMPSO algorithm, the velocity factor is updated using fuzzy logic. In this article, two variants, FL-total OLMPSO (FL-TOLMPSO) and FL-partial OLMPSO (FL-POLMPSO) of FL-OLMPSO, are proposed. The simulation results of proposed techniques show desirable results regarding MMCE, MMSE, and BER as compared to conventional opposite learning mutant PSO (TOLMPSO and POLMPSO) techniques.

Handwritten Bangla Character Recognition Using the State-of-the-Art Deep Convolutional Neural Networks.

Abstract: In spite of advances in object recognition technology, handwritten Bangla character recognition (HBCR) remains largely unsolved due to the presence of many ambiguous handwritten characters and excessively cursive Bangla handwritings. Even many advanced existing methods do not lead to satisfactory performance in practice that related to HBCR. In this paper, a set of the state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) is discussed and their performance on the application of HBCR is systematically evaluated. The main advantage of DCNN approaches is that they can extract discriminative features from raw data and represent them with a high degree of invariance to object distortions. The experimental results show the superior performance of DCNN models compared with the other popular object recognition approaches, which implies DCNN can be a good candidate for building an automatic HBCR system for practical applications.

Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Facial Expression Recognition Using Generative Adversarial Networks.

Abstract: In the facial expression recognition task, a good-performing convolutional neural network (CNN) model trained on one dataset (source dataset) usually performs poorly on another dataset (target dataset). This is because the feature distribution of the same emotion varies in different datasets. To improve the cross-dataset accuracy of the CNN model, we introduce an unsupervised domain adaptation method, which is especially suitable for unlabelled small target dataset. In order to solve the problem of lack of samples from the target dataset, we train a generative adversarial network (GAN) on the target dataset and use the GAN generated samples to fine-tune the model pretrained on the source dataset. In the process of fine-tuning, we give the unlabelled GAN generated samples distributed pseudolabels dynamically according to the current prediction probabilities. Our method can be easily applied to any existing convolutional neural networks (CNN). We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on four facial expression recognition datasets with two CNN structures and obtain inspiring results.

A Composite Model of Wound Segmentation Based on Traditional Methods and Deep Neural Networks.

Abstract: Wound segmentation plays an important supporting role in the wound observation and wound healing. Current methods of image segmentation include those based on traditional process of image and those based on deep neural networks. The traditional methods use the artificial image features to complete the task without large amounts of labeled data. Meanwhile, the methods based on deep neural networks can extract the image features effectively without the artificial design, but lots of training data are required. Combined with the advantages of them, this paper presents a composite model of wound segmentation. The model uses the skin with wound detection algorithm we designed in the paper to highlight image features. Then, the preprocessed images are segmented by deep neural networks. And semantic corrections are applied to the segmentation results at last. The model shows a good performance in our experiment.

Recognition of Emotions Using Multichannel EEG Data and DBN-GC-Based Ensemble Deep Learning Framework.

Abstract: Fusing multichannel neurophysiological signals to recognize human emotion states becomes increasingly attractive. The conventional methods ignore the complementarity between time domain characteristics, frequency domain characteristics, and time-frequency characteristics of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals and cannot fully capture the correlation information between different channels. In this paper, an integrated deep learning framework based on improved deep belief networks with glia chains (DBN-GCs) is proposed. In the framework, the member DBN-GCs are employed for extracting intermediate representations of EEG raw features from multiple domains separately, as well as mining interchannel correlation information by glia chains. Then, the higher level features describing time domain characteristics, frequency domain characteristics, and time-frequency characteristics are fused by a discriminative restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) to implement emotion recognition task. Experiments conducted on the DEAP benchmarking dataset achieve averaged accuracy of 75.92% and 76.83% for arousal and valence states classification, respectively. The results show that the proposed framework outperforms most of the above deep classifiers. Thus, potential of the proposed framework is demonstrated.

Implementing a Parallel Image Edge Detection Algorithm Based on the Otsu-Canny Operator on the Hadoop Platform

Abstract: The Canny operator is widely used to detect edges in images. However, as the size of the image dataset increases, the edge detection performance of the Canny operator decreases and its runtime becomes excessive. To improve the runtime and edge detection performance of the Canny operator, in this paper, we propose a parallel design and implementation for an Otsu-optimized Canny operator using a MapReduce parallel programming model that runs on the Hadoop platform. The Otsu algorithm is used to optimize the Canny operator's dual threshold and improve the edge detection performance, while the MapReduce parallel programming model facilitates parallel processing for the Canny operator to solve the processing speed and communication cost problems that occur when the Canny edge detection algorithm is applied to big data. For the experiments, we constructed datasets of different scales from the Pascal VOC2012 image database. The proposed parallel Otsu-Canny edge detection algorithm performs better than other traditional edge detection algorithms. The parallel approach reduced the running time by approximately 67.2% on a Hadoop cluster architecture consisting of 5 nodes with a dataset of 60,000 images. Overall, our approach system speeds up the system by approximately 3.4 times when processing large-scale datasets, which demonstrates the obvious superiority of our method. The proposed algorithm in this study demonstrates both better edge detection performance and improved time performance.

Combining Cryptography with EEG Biometrics.

Abstract: Cryptographic frameworks depend on key sharing for ensuring security of data. While the keys in cryptographic frameworks must be correctly reproducible and not unequivocally connected to the identity of a user, in biometric frameworks this is different. Joining cryptography techniques with biometrics can solve these issues. We present a biometric authentication method based on the discrete logarithm problem and Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes, perform its security analysis, and demonstrate its security characteristics. We evaluate a biometric cryptosystem using our own dataset of electroencephalography (EEG) data collected from 42 subjects. The experimental results show that the described biometric user authentication system is effective, achieving an Equal Error Rate (ERR) of 0.024.

A Pruning Neural Network Model in Credit Classification Analysis.

Abstract: Nowadays, credit classification models are widely applied because they can help financial decision-makers to handle credit classification issues. Among them, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been widely accepted as the convincing methods in the credit industry. In this paper, we propose a pruning neural network (PNN) and apply it to solve credit classification problem by adopting the well-known Australian and Japanese credit datasets. The model is inspired by synaptic nonlinearity of a dendritic tree in a biological neural model. And it is trained by an error back-propagation algorithm. The model is capable of realizing a neuronal pruning function by removing the superfluous synapses and useless dendrites and forms a tidy dendritic morphology at the end of learning. Furthermore, we utilize logic circuits (LCs) to simulate the dendritic structures successfully which makes PNN be implemented on the hardware effectively. The statistical results of our experiments have verified that PNN obtains superior performance in comparison with other classical algorithms in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency.

Fractional-Order Deep Backpropagation Neural Network.

Abstract: In recent years, the research of artificial neural networks based on fractional calculus has attracted much attention. In this paper, we proposed a fractional-order deep backpropagation (BP) neural network model with L2 regularization. The proposed network was optimized by the fractional gradient descent method with Caputo derivative. We also illustrated the necessary conditions for the convergence of the proposed network. The influence of L2 regularization on the convergence was analyzed with the fractional-order variational method. The experiments have been performed on the MNIST dataset to demonstrate that the proposed network was deterministically convergent and can effectively avoid overfitting.

Effectiveness of Serious Games for Leap Motion on the Functionality of the Upper Limb in Parkinson’s Disease: A Feasibility Study

Abstract: The design and application of Serious Games (SG) based on the Leap Motion sensor are presented as a tool to support the rehabilitation therapies for upper limbs. Initially, the design principles and their implementation are described, focusing on improving both unilateral and bilateral manual dexterity and coordination. The design of the games has been supervised by specialized therapists. To assess the therapeutic effectiveness of the proposed system, a protocol of trials with Parkinson's patients has been defined. Evaluations of the physical condition of the participants in the study, at the beginning and at the end of the treatment, are carried out using standard tests. The specific measurements of each game give the therapist more detailed information about the patients' evolution after finishing the planned protocol. The obtained results support the fact that the set of developed video games can be combined to define different therapy protocols and that the information obtained is richer than the one obtained through current clinical metrics, serving as method of motor function assessment.

Decoding Motor Imagery through Common Spatial Pattern Filters at the EEG Source Space

Abstract: Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a rapidly developing technology that aims to support individuals suffering from various disabilities and, ultimately, improve everyday quality of life. Sensorimotor rhythm-based BCIs have demonstrated remarkable results in controlling virtual or physical external devices but they still face a number of challenges and limitations. Main challenges include multiple degrees-of-freedom control, accuracy, and robustness. In this work, we develop a multiclass BCI decoding algorithm that uses electroencephalography (EEG) source imaging, a technique that maps scalp potentials to cortical activations, to compensate for low spatial resolution of EEG. Spatial features were extracted using Common Spatial Pattern (CSP) filters in the cortical source space from a number of selected Regions of Interest (ROIs). Classification was performed through an ensemble model, based on individual ROI classification models. The evaluation was performed on the BCI Competition IV dataset 2a, which features 4 motor imagery classes from 9 participants. Our results revealed a mean accuracy increase of 5.6% with respect to the conventional application method of CSP on sensors. Neuroanatomical constraints and prior neurophysiological knowledge play an important role in developing source space-based BCI algorithms. Feature selection and classifier characteristics of our implementation will be explored to raise performance to current state-of-the-art.

Emotion Recognition Based on Weighted Fusion Strategy of Multichannel Physiological Signals.

Abstract: Emotion recognition is an important pattern recognition problem that has inspired researchers for several areas. Various data from humans for emotion recognition have been developed, including visual, audio, and physiological signals data. This paper proposes a decision-level weight fusion strategy for emotion recognition in multichannel physiological signals. Firstly, we selected four kinds of physiological signals, including Electroencephalography (EEG), Electrocardiogram (ECG), Respiration Amplitude (RA), and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR). And various analysis domains have been used in physiological emotion features extraction. Secondly, we adopt feedback strategy for weight definition, according to recognition rate of each emotion of each physiological signal based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier independently. Finally, we introduce weight in decision level by linear fusing weight matrix with classification result of each SVM classifier. The experiments on the MAHNOB-HCI database show the highest accuracy. The results also provide evidence and suggest a way for further developing a more specialized emotion recognition system based on multichannel data using weight fusion strategy.

Liraglutide Activates the Nrf2/HO-1 Antioxidant Pathway and Protects Brain Nerve Cells against Cerebral Ischemia in Diabetic Rats

Abstract: This study aimed to determine the effect of liraglutide pretreatment and to elucidate the mechanism of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (Nrf2)/heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) signaling after focal cerebral ischemia injury in diabetic rats model. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into the sham-operated (S) group, diabetes mellitus ischemia (DM + MCAO) group, liraglutide pretreatment normal blood glucose ischemia (NDM+MCAO+L) group, and liraglutide pretreatment diabetes ischemia (DM + MCAO + L) group. At 48 h after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), neurological deficits and infarct volume of brain were measured. Oxidative stress brain tissue was determined by superoxide dismutase (SOD) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activities. The expression levels of Nrf2 and HO-1 of brain tissue were analyzed by western blotting. In the DM + MCAO + L group, neurological deficits scores and cerebral infarct volume seemed to decrease at 48 h after MCAO cerebral ischemia compared with those in DM + MCAO group ( ). In addition, the expression of Nrf2 and HO-1 increased in 48 h at liraglutide pretreatment groups after MCAO cerebral ischemia if compared with those in the DM + MCAO group ( ). Furthermore, the DM + MCAO + L group has no significant difference compared with the NDM + MCAO + L group ( ). To sum up, alleviating effects of liraglutide on diabetes complicated with cerebral ischemia injury rats would be related to Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway.

Machine-Learning Approach to Optimize SMOTE Ratio in Class Imbalance Dataset for Intrusion Detection

Abstract: The KDD CUP 1999 intrusion detection dataset was introduced at the third international knowledge discovery and data mining tools competition, and it has been widely used for many studies. The attack types of KDD CUP 1999 dataset are divided into four categories: user to root (U2R), remote to local (R2L), denial of service (DoS), and Probe. We use five classes by adding the normal class. We define the U2R, R2L, and Probe classes, which are each less than 1% of the total dataset, as rare classes. In this study, we attempt to mitigate the class imbalance of the dataset. Using the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE), we attempted to optimize the SMOTE ratios for the rare classes (U2R, R2L, and Probe). After randomly generating a number of tuples of SMOTE ratios, these tuples were used to create a numerical model for optimizing the SMOTE ratios of the rare classes. The support vector regression was used to create the model. We assigned each instance in the test dataset to the model and chose the best SMOTE ratios. The experiments using machine-learning techniques were conducted using the best ratios. The results using the proposed method were significantly better than those of previous approach and other related work.

Using Black Hole Algorithm to Improve EEG-Based Emotion Recognition.

Abstract: Emotions are a critical aspect of human behavior. One widely used technique for research in emotion measurement is based on the use of EEG signals. In general terms, the first step of signal processing is the elimination of noise, which can be done in manual or automatic terms. The next step is determining the feature vector using, for example, entropy calculation and its variations to generate a classification model. It is possible to use this approach to classify theoretical models such as the Circumplex model. This model proposes that emotions are distributed in a two-dimensional circular space. However, methods to determine the feature vector are highly susceptible to noise that may exist in the signal. In this article, a new method to adjust the classifier is proposed using metaheuristics based on the black hole algorithm. The method is aimed at obtaining results similar to those obtained with manual noise elimination methods. In order to evaluate the proposed method, the MAHNOB HCI Tagging Database was used. Results show that using the black hole algorithm to optimize the feature vector of the Support Vector Machine we obtained an accuracy of 92.56% over 30 executions.

Image Processing-Based Recognition of Wall Defects Using Machine Learning Approaches and Steerable Filters

Abstract: Detection of defects including cracks and spalls on wall surface in high-rise buildings is a crucial task of buildings’ maintenance. If left undetected and untreated, these defects can significantly affect the structural integrity and the aesthetic aspect of buildings. Timely and cost-effective methods of building condition survey are of practicing need for the building owners and maintenance agencies to replace the time- and labor-consuming approach of manual survey. This study constructs an image processing approach for periodically evaluating the condition of wall structures. Image processing algorithms of steerable filters and projection integrals are employed to extract useful features from digital images. The newly developed model relies on the Support vector machine and least squares support vector machine to generalize the classification boundaries that categorize conditions of wall into five labels: longitudinal crack, transverse crack, diagonal crack, spall damage, and intact wall. A data set consisting of 500 image samples has been collected to train and test the machine learning based classifiers. Experimental results point out that the proposed model that combines the image processing and machine learning algorithms can achieve a good classification performance with a classification accuracy rate = 85.33%. Therefore, the newly developed method can be a promising alternative to assist maintenance agencies in periodic building surveys.

A Neural Machine Translation Model for Arabic Dialects That Utilises Multitask Learning (MTL).

Abstract: In this research article, we study the problem of employing a neural machine translation model to translate Arabic dialects to modern standard Arabic. The proposed solution of the neural machine translation model is prompted by the recurrent neural network-based encoder-decoder neural machine translation model that has been proposed recently, which generalizes machine translation as sequence learning problems. We propose the development of a multiytask learning (MTL) model which shares one decoder among language pairs, and every source language has a separate encoder. The proposed model can be applied to limited volumes of data as well as extensive amounts of data. Experiments carried out have shown that the proposed MTL model can ensure a higher quality of translation when compared to the individually learned model.

Modified Backtracking Search Optimization Algorithm Inspired by Simulated Annealing for Constrained Engineering Optimization Problems.

Abstract: The backtracking search optimization algorithm (BSA) is a population-based evolutionary algorithm for numerical optimization problems. BSA has a powerful global exploration capacity while its local exploitation capability is relatively poor. This affects the convergence speed of the algorithm. In this paper, we propose a modified BSA inspired by simulated annealing (BSAISA) to overcome the deficiency of BSA. In the BSAISA, the amplitude control factor (F) is modified based on the Metropolis criterion in simulated annealing. The redesigned F could be adaptively decreased as the number of iterations increases and it does not introduce extra parameters. A self-adaptive e-constrained method is used to handle the strict constraints. We compared the performance of the proposed BSAISA with BSA and other well-known algorithms when solving thirteen constrained benchmarks and five engineering design problems. The simulation results demonstrated that BSAISA is more effective than BSA and more competitive with other well-known algorithms in terms of convergence speed.

Social Touch Gesture Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Network.

Abstract: Recently, social touch gesture recognition has been considered an important topic for touch modality, which can lead to highly efficient and realistic human-robot interaction. In this paper, a deep convolutional neural network is selected to implement a social touch recognition system for raw input samples (sensor data) only. The touch gesture recognition is performed using a dataset previously measured with numerous subjects that perform varying social gestures. This dataset is dubbed as the corpus of social touch, where touch was performed on a mannequin arm. A leave-one-subject-out cross-validation method is used to evaluate system performance. The proposed method can recognize gestures in nearly real time after acquiring a minimum number of frames (the average range of frame length was from 0.2% to 4.19% from the original frame lengths) with a classification accuracy of 63.7%. The achieved classification accuracy is competitive in terms of the performance of existing algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed system outperforms other classification algorithms in terms of classification ratio and touch recognition time without data preprocessing for the same dataset.

A New Approach to Diagnose Parkinson’s Disease Using a Structural Cooccurrence Matrix for a Similarity Analysis

Abstract: Parkinson’s disease affects millions of people around the world and consequently various approaches have emerged to help diagnose this disease, among which we can highlight handwriting exams. Extracting features from handwriting exams is an important contribution of the computational field for the diagnosis of this disease. In this paper, we propose an approach that measures the similarity between the exam template and the handwritten trace of the patient following the exam template. This similarity was measured using the Structural Cooccurrence Matrix to calculate how close the handwritten trace of the patient is to the exam template. The proposed approach was evaluated using various exam templates and the handwritten traces of the patient. Each of these variations was used together with the Naive Bayes, OPF, and SVM classifiers. In conclusion the proposed approach was proven to be better than the existing methods found in the literature and is therefore a promising tool for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.

Binary Morphological Filtering of Dominant Scattering Area Residues for SAR Target Recognition.

Abstract: A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) target recognition method is proposed in this study based on the dominant scattering area (DSA). DSA is a binary image recording the positions of the dominant scattering centers in the original SAR image. It can reflect the distribution of the scattering centers as well as the preliminary shape of the target, thus providing discriminative information for SAR target recognition. By subtracting the DSA of the test image with those of its corresponding templates from different classes, the DSA residues represent the differences between the test image and various classes. To further enhance the differences, the DSA residues are subject to the binary morphological filtering, i.e., the opening operation. Afterwards, a similarity measure is defined based on the filtered DSA residues after the binary opening operation. Considering the possible variations of the constructed DSA, several different structuring elements are used during the binary morphological filtering. And a score-level fusion is performed afterwards to obtain a robust similarity. By comparing the similarities between the test image and various template classes, the target label is determined to be the one with the maximum similarity. To validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method, experiments are conducted on the moving and stationary target acquisition and recognition (MSTAR) dataset and compared with several state-of-the-art SAR target recognition methods.