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Wafer-level direct bonding technology is a key process for the production of backside illuminated (BSI) CMOS image sensor (CIS). Usually, constant-depth mode scanning acoustic microscope (C-SAM) 300mm wafer images are acquired and defect size distribution is provided to monitor defects that degrade bonding yield. This acquisition technique is used as it is nondestructive and is able to capture the full wafer. Current solutions are not providing information detailed enough to identify the root cause of this degradation. A consequence is that most measurements and classification is currently done manually which take time and have reproducibility issues. In this paper, we propose a rule-based method for the classification of the defects and automatic segmentation of the defects to extract precise measurements depending on the type of defect. The classes of defects are precisely defined based on their origin in the process. All these information will allow to reduce the time to analyze the images and improve the precision and consistency of the analysis. These results will allow to identify more precisely the defects thus the causes of yield degradation during bonding process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a kind of non-invasive, low-cost, and readily available brain examination, EEG has attached significance to the means of clinical diagnosis of epilepsy. However, the reading of long-term EEG records has brought a heavy burden to neurologists and experts. Therefore, automatic EEG classification for epileptic patients plays an essential role in epilepsy diagnosis and treatment. This paper proposes an Attention Mechanism-based Wavelet Convolution Neural Network for epilepsy EEG classification. Attention Mechanism-based Wavelet Convolution Neural Network firstly uses multi-scale wavelet analysis to decompose the input EEGs to obtain their components in different frequency bands. Then, these decomposed multi-scale EEGs are input into the Convolution Neural Network with an attention mechanism for further feature extraction and classification. The proposed algorithm achieves 98.89% triple classification accuracy on the Bonn EEG database and 99.70% binary classification accuracy on the Bern-Barcelona EEG database. Our experiments prove that the proposed algorithm achieves a state-of-the-art classification effect on epilepsy EEG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) plays an important role in both civilian and military applications. Today, increasingly more researchers apply a deep learning framework in AMC. However, few papers take into account that a typical deep model is difficult to deploy on resource constrained devices. In this paper, we propose a new filter-level pruning technique based on activation maximization (AM) that omits the less important convolutional filter. Compared to other network pruning techniques, the convolutional neural network pruned via the AM method achieves equal or higher classification accuracy in the RadioML2016.10a dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semiconductor manufacturing is on the cusp of a revolution – the Internet of Things (IoT). With IoT we can connect all the equipment and feed information back to the factory so that quality issues can be detected. In this situation, more and more edge devices are used in wafer inspection equipment. This edge device must have the ability to quickly detect defects. Therefore, how to develop a high-efficiency architecture for automatic defect classification to be suitable for edge devices is the primary task. In this paper, we present a novel architecture that can perform defect classification in a more efficient way. The first function is self-proliferation, using a series of linear transformations to generate more feature maps at a cheaper cost. The second function is self-attention, capturing the long-range dependencies of feature map by the channel-wise and spatial-wise attention mechanism. We named this method as self-proliferation-and-attention neural network (SP&A-Net). This method has been successfully applied to various defect pattern classification tasks. Compared with other latest methods, SP&A-Net has higher accuracy and lower computation cost in many defect inspection tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The realization of nondestructive detection and classification of pavement distress is of great significance for putting forward a reasonable maintenance scheme and prolonging the service life of the road. In this paper, the advanced air-coupled 3D ground-penetrating radar (3D-GPR) was used to detect Li-Ma Expressway (Jiangsu Province, China) to achieve the purpose of rapid, accurate, and nondestructive testing. Through on-site coring at the corresponding radar anomaly signal, it is verified that the 3D-GPR can identify the characteristics of pavement distress. To address the issue of a large amount of 3D-GPR images required to be processed and low efficiency of current manual classification, VGG16 and ResNet50 models were established based on deep convolutional neural network to classify four pavement distresses automatically. The results showed that the maximum accuracy, precision, and recall obtained from the VGG16 model training results were 98.73%, 97.98%, and 96.17%, respectively. In addition, The overall processing time of VGG16 to identify 2525 radar images with $200 \times 200$ pixels is 232 s. And VGG16 was selected as the automatic classification model of 3D-GPR image for pavement distress of Li-Ma Expressway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning (DL) has recently aroused substantial concern due to its successful implementations in many fields. Currently, there are few studies on the applications of DL in the automatic modulation classification (AMC), which plays a critical role in non-cooperation communications. Besides, most previous work ignores the feature interaction, and only considers spatial or temporal attributes of signals. Combining the advantages of the convolutional neural network (CNN), and the long short-term memory (LSTM), this paper addresses the AMC using CNN-LSTM based dual-stream structure, which efficiently explores the feature interaction, and the spatial-temporal properties of raw complex temporal signals. Specifically, a preprocessing step is first implemented to convert signals into the temporal in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) format, and the amplitude/phase (A/P) representation, which facilitates the acquirement of more effective features for classification. To extract features from each signal pattern, each stream is composed of CNN, and LSTM (denoted as CNN-LSTM). Most importantly, the features learned from two streams interact in pairs, which increases the diversity of features and thereby further improves the performance. Finally, some comparisons with previous work are performed. The experimental results not only demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method compared with the existing state-of-the-art methods, but also reveal the potential of DL-based approaches for AMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine-learning algorithms have shown outstanding image recognition/classification performance for computer vision applications. However, the compute and energy requirement for implementing such classifier models for large-scale problems is quite high. In this paper, we propose feature driven selective classification (FALCON) inspired by the biological visual attention mechanism in the brain to optimize the energy-efficiency of machine-learning classifiers. We use the consensus in the characteristic features (color/texture) across images in a dataset to decompose the original classification problem and construct a tree of classifiers (nodes) with a generic-to-specific transition in the classification hierarchy. The initial nodes of the tree separate the instances based on feature information and selectively enable the latter nodes to perform object specific classification. The proposed methodology allows selective activation of only those branches and nodes of the classification tree that are relevant to the input while keeping the remaining nodes idle. Additionally, we propose a programmable and scalable neuromorphic engine (NeuE) that utilizes arrays of specialized neural computational elements to execute the FALCON-based classifier models for diverse datasets. The structure of FALCON facilitates the reuse of nodes while scaling up from small classification problems to larger ones thus allowing us to construct classifier implementations that are significantly more efficient. We evaluate our approach for a 12-object classification task on the Caltech101 dataset and ten-object task on CIFAR-10 dataset by constructing FALCON models on the NeuE platform in 45-nm technology. Our results demonstrate up to $3.66\boldsymbol \times $ improvement in energy-efficiency for no loss in output quality, and even higher improvements of up to $5.91\boldsymbol \times $ with 3.9% accuracy loss compared to an optimized baseline network. In addition, FALCON shows an improvement in training time of up to $1.96\boldsymbol \times $ as compared to the traditional classification approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast detection of hazardous objects in millimeter-wave personnel screening can increase the operating efficiency of secure environments. In airports, accurate automatic detection and classification of body-worn objects can reduce the number of pat-downs while keeping the transportation environment safe and secure. Since many benign objects, such as paper and leather, are lossy materials, being able to characterize them and set them aside from the secondary checks will significantly reduce the screening process time. In this article, we introduce an effective image-processing-based method for characterizing lossy materials that might be concealed under clothing at checkpoints. The method has been combined with a modified version of the previously developed algorithm that can be used specifically to characterize lossless materials. The proposed algorithm can automatically distinguish lossless materials from lossy ones and calculate their thickness and permittivities. Starting from the radar reconstructed image showing a cross section of the body, we extract the nominal body contour using the Fourier series, separate body, and object responses, categorize the object as lossy or lossless based on the depression and protrusion of the body contour, and, finally, predict possible values for the object’s permittivity and thickness. Our resulting classification is good, implying fewer nuisance alarms at checkpoints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic International Classification of Diseases (ICD) coding is defined as a kind of text multi-label classification problem, which is difficult because the number of labels is very large and the distribution of labels is unbalanced. The label-wise attention mechanism is widely used in automatic ICD coding because it can assign weights to every word in full Electronic Medical Records (EMR) for different ICD codes. However, the label-wise attention mechanism is redundant and costly in computing. In this paper, we propose a pseudo label-wise attention mechanism to tackle the problem. Instead of computing different attention modes for different ICD codes, the pseudo label-wise attention mechanism automatically merges similar ICD codes and computes only one attention mode for the similar ICD codes, which greatly compresses the number of attention modes and improves the predicted accuracy. In addition, we apply a more convenient and effective way to obtain the ICD vectors, and thus our model can predict new ICD codes by calculating the similarities between EMR vectors and ICD vectors. Our model demonstrates effectiveness in extensive computational experiments. On the public MIMIC-III dataset and private Xiangya dataset, our model achieves the best performance on micro F1 (0.583 and 0.806), micro AUC (0.986 and 0.994), P@8 (0.756 and 0.413), and costs much smaller GPU memory (about 26.1% of the models with label-wise attention). Furthermore, we verify the ability of our model in predicting new ICD codes. The interpretablility analysis and case study show the effectiveness and reliability of the patterns obtained by the pseudo label-wise attention mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents for the first time decision fusion for multimodal biometric system using social network analysis (SNA). The main challenge in the design of biometric systems, at present, lies in unavailability of high-quality data to ensure consistently high recognition results. Resorting to multimodal biometric partially solves the problem, however, issues with dimensionality reduction, classifier selection, and aggregated decision making remain. The presented methodology successfully overcomes the problem through employing novel decision fusion using SNA. While several types of feature extractors can be used to reduce the dimension and identify significant features, we chose the Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis as one of the most efficient methods. Social networks are constructed based on similarity and correlation of features among the classes. The final classification result is generated based on the two levels of decision fusion methods. At the first level, individual biometrics (face or ear or signature) are classified using matching score methodology. SNA is used to reinforce the confidence level of the classifier to reduce the error rate. In the second level, outcomes of classification based on individual biometrics are fused together to obtain the final decision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cataract is the clouding of lens, which affects vision and it is the leading cause of blindness in the world’s population. Accurate and convenient cataract detection and cataract severity evaluation will improve the situation. Automatic cataract detection and grading methods are proposed in this paper. With prior knowledge, the improved Haar features and visible structure features are combined as features, and multilayer perceptron with discrete state transition (DST-MLP) or exponential DST (EDST-MLP) are designed as classifiers. Without prior knowledge, residual neural networks with DST (DST-ResNet) or EDST (EDST-ResNet) are proposed. Whether with prior knowledge or not, our proposed DST and EDST strategy can prevent overfitting and reduce storage memory during network training and implementation, and neural networks with these strategies achieve state-of-the-art accuracy in cataract detection and grading. The experimental results indicate that combined features always achieve better performance than a single type of feature, and classification methods with feature extraction based on prior knowledge are more suitable for complicated medical image classification task. These analyses can provide constructive advice for other medical image processing applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we focus on a defect analysis task that requires engineers to identify the causes of yield reduction from defect classification results. We organize the analysis work into three phases: defect classification, defect trend monitoring and detailed classification. To support the first and third engineer’s analytical work, we use a convolutional neural network based on the transfer learning method for automatic defect classification. We evaluated our proposed methods on real semiconductor fabrication data sets by performing a defect classification task using a scanning electron microscope image and thoroughly examining its performance. We concluded that the proposed method can classify defect images with high accuracy while lowering labor costs equivalent to one-third the labor required for manual inspection work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To deal with the deep learning-based automatic modulation classification (AMC) in the scenario that the training dataset are distributed over a network without gathering the data at a centralized location, the decentralized learning-based AMC (DecentAMC) had been presented. However, there exists frequent model parameter uploading and downloading in DecentAMC method, which cause high communication overhead. In this paper, an innovative learning framework are proposed for AMC (named DeEnAMC), in which the framework is realized by utilizing the combination of decentralized learning and ensemble learning. Our results show that the proposed DeEnAMC reduces communication overhead while keeping a similar classification performance to DecentAMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression is the most incapacitating disease worldwide, and it has an alarming comorbidity rate with anxiety. The use of social networks to expose personal difficulties has enabled works on the automatic identification of specific mental conditions, particularly depression. In spite of many solutions proposed for the automatic recognition of depression, fewer exist for anxiety and its comorbidity with depression. In this paper, we propose DAC Stacking, a solution that leverages stacking ensembles and Deep Learning (DL) to automatically identify depression, anxiety, and their comorbidity, using data extracted from Reddit. The stacking is composed of single-label binary classifiers, that either distinguish between specific disorders and control users (experts), or between pairs of target conditions (differentiating). A meta-learner explores these base classifiers as a context for reaching a multi-label decision. We assessed alternative ensemble topologies, exploring roles for base models, DL architectures, and word embeddings. All base classifiers and ensembles outperformed the baselines for depression and anxiety (f-measures near 0.79). The ensemble topology with the best performance (Hamming Loss of 0.29 and Exact Match Ratio of 0.46) combines base classifiers of three DL architectures, and includes expert and differentiating base models. The analysis of the influential classification features according to SHAP revealed the strengths of our solution and provided insights on the challenges for the automatic classification of the addressed mental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) plays a vital role in cognitive radio to improve spectrum utilization efficiency, however, most of the existing works have focused on single-carrier communications in single-input single-output systems. In this paper, we propose an efficient AMC method for multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) communication systems with the assumption of unknown frequency-selective fading channels and signal-to-noise ratio. At the receiver, the complex envelope samples of a burst signal acquired by multiple antennas are decomposed into in-phase and quadrature samples, which are then structured into a high-dimensional data array. To learn the modulation patterns from received signals, we develop a deep network, namely three-dimensional MIMO-OFDM convolutional neural network (MONet). With cuboidal convolution filters, the proposed MONet allows the network to capture underlying features as intra- and inter-antenna correlations at multi-scale signal representations. Relying on simulations, MONet achieves the classification accuracy of over 95% at 0 dB SNR under various channel impairments and shows the robustness with different MIMO antenna configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A system for automatic detection and classification (ADAC) of underwater objects for mine hunting applications is proposed. The system consists of three steps: segmentation, feature extraction, and classification. This paper focuses on two design issues: the selection of the optimal classifier and the selection of the optimal feature subset. Often, the comparison of classification systems is based on a pre-selected feature set. However, a different subset might yield a different ranking. We apply a resampling algorithm that assesses the classifier performance without constraints to any specific feature subset. Once a classifier is chosen, a feature selection algorithm estimates the optimal feature subset. We propose a novel extension of the sequential forward selection (SFS) and the sequential forward floating selection (SFFS) methods, which mitigates their main limitations, i.e., the nesting problem. Instead of keeping the best alternative at each iteration, a set of D options is stored. The performance of the so-called D-SFS and D-SFFS is tested on simulated and real data, significantly outperforming the standard algorithms. The proposed methods are also used for designing an ADAC system for mine hunting based on two extensive databases of synthetic aperture sonar images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partial discharge (PD) source classification aims to identify the types of defects causing discharges in high voltage (HV) equipment. This paper presents a comprehensive study of applying pattern recognition techniques to automatic PD source classification. Three challenging issues are investigated in this paper. The first issue is the feature extraction for obtaining representative attributes from the original PD measurement data. Several approaches including stochastic neighbour embedding (SNE), principle component analysis (PCA), kernel principle component analysis (KPCA), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and conventional statistic operators are adopted for feature extraction. The second issue is the pattern recognition algorithms for identifying various types of PD sources. A novel fuzzy support vector machine (FSVM) and a variety of artificial neural networks (ANNs) are applied in the paper. The third issue is the identification of multiple PD sources, which may occur in HV equipment simultaneously. Two approaches are proposed to address this issue. To evaluate the performance of various algorithms in this paper, extensive laboratory experiments on a number of artificial PD models are conducted. The classification results reveal that FSVM significantly outperforms a number of ANN algorithms. The practical PD sources classification for HV equipment is a considerable complicated problem. Therefore, this paper also discusses some issues of meaningful application of the above proposed pattern recognition techniques for practical PD sources classification of HV equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Video and image sources are frequently applied in the area of defect inspection in industrial community. For the recognition and classification of sewer defects, a significant number of videos and images of sewers are collected. These data are then checked by human and some traditional methods to recognize and classify the sewer defects, which is inefficient and error-prone. Previously developed features like SIFT are unable to comprehensively represent such defects. Therefore, feature representation is especially important for defect autoclassification. In this paper, we study the automatic extraction of feature representation for sewer defects via deep learning. Moreover, a complete automatic system for classifying sewer defects is proposed built on a two-level hierarchical deep convolutional neural network, which shows high performance with respect to classification accuracy. The proposed network is trained on a novel data set with over 40 000 sewer images. The system has been successfully applied in the practical production, confirming its robustness and feasibility to real-world applications. The source code and trained model are available at the project website. Note to Practitioners—Automatic defect inspection has become a fundamental research topic in engineering application field. Specifically, sewer defect detection is an important measure for maintenance, renewal, and rehabilitation activities of sewer infrastructure. In the current operation procedure, all the captured videos need to be inspected by experts frame by frame to recognize defects, yielding a significant low inspection rate with a significant amount of time. Previous work has attempted to employ traditional image processing methods for automated sewer defect classification. However, these methods get poor generalization capabilities since they use pre-engineered features. In most cases, sewerage inspection companies have to hire numerous professional inspectors to do this job, thereby consuming a lot of human and material resources. To address this problem, the authors propose an automatic detection and classification method for sewer defects based on hierarchical deep learning. Demonstrated by various experiments, the designed framework achieves a high defect classification accuracy, which can be easily integrated into an automatic sewer defect inspection system. 1 https://github.com/NUAAXQ/SewerDefectDetection [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various types of atherosclerotic plaque and varying grades of stenosis could lead to different management of patients with a coronary artery disease. Therefore, it is crucial to detect and classify the type of coronary artery plaque, as well as to detect and determine the degree of coronary artery stenosis. This paper includes retrospectively collected clinically obtained coronary CT angiography (CCTA) scans of 163 patients. In these, the centerlines of the coronary arteries were extracted and used to reconstruct multi-planar reformatted (MPR) images for the coronary arteries. To define the reference standard, the presence and the type of plaque in the coronary arteries (no plaque, non-calcified, mixed, calcified), as well as the presence and the anatomical significance of coronary stenosis (no stenosis, non-significant, i.e., <50% luminal narrowing, and significant, i.e., ≥50% luminal narrowing) were manually annotated in the MPR images by identifying the start- and end-points of the segment of the artery affected by the plaque. To perform an automatic analysis, a multi-task recurrent convolutional neural network is applied on coronary artery MPR images. First, a 3D convolutional neural network is utilized to extract features along the coronary artery. Subsequently, the extracted features are aggregated by a recurrent neural network that performs two simultaneous multi-class classification tasks. In the first task, the network detects and characterizes the type of the coronary artery plaque. In the second task, the network detects and determines the anatomical significance of the coronary artery stenosis. The network was trained and tested using the CCTA images of 98 and 65 patients, respectively. For detection and characterization of coronary plaque, the method was achieved an accuracy of 0.77. For detection of stenosis and determination of its anatomical significance, the method was achieved an accuracy of 0.80. The results demonstrate that automatic detection and classification of coronary artery plaque and stenosis are feasible. This may enable automated triage of patients to those without coronary plaque and those with coronary plaque and stenosis in need for further cardiovascular workup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An automatic defect classification (ADC) system identifies and classifies wafer surface defects using scanning electron microscope images. By classifying defects, manufacturers can determine whether the wafer can be repaired and proceed to the next fabrication step. Current ADC systems have high defect detection performance. However, the classification power is poor. In most work sites, defect classification is performed manually using the naked eye, which is unreliable. This paper proposes an ADC method based on deep learning that automatically classifies various types of wafer surface damage. In contrast to conventional ADC methods, which apply a series of image recognition and machine learning techniques to find features for defect classification, the proposed model adopts a single convolutional neural network (CNN) model that can extract effective features for defect classification without using additional feature extraction algorithms. Moreover, the proposed method can identify defect classes not seen during training by comparing the CNN features of the unseen classes with those of the trained classes. Experiments with real datasets verified that the proposed ADC method achieves high defect classification performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies show that pulmonary vascular diseases may specifically affect arteries or veins through different physiologic mechanisms. To detect changes in the two vascular trees, physicians manually analyze the chest computed tomography (CT) image of the patients in search of abnormalities. This process is time consuming, difficult to standardize, and thus not feasible for large clinical studies or useful in real-world clinical decision making. Therefore, automatic separation of arteries and veins in CT images is becoming of great interest, as it may help physicians to accurately diagnose pathological conditions. In this paper, we present a novel, fully automatic approach to classify vessels from chest CT images into arteries and veins. The algorithm follows three main steps: first, a scale-space particles segmentation to isolate vessels; then a 3-D convolutional neural network (CNN) to obtain a first classification of vessels; finally, graph-cuts’ optimization to refine the results. To justify the usage of the proposed CNN architecture, we compared different 2-D and 3-D CNNs that may use local information from bronchus- and vessel-enhanced images provided to the network with different strategies. We also compared the proposed CNN approach with a random forests (RFs) classifier. The methodology was trained and evaluated on the superior and inferior lobes of the right lung of 18 clinical cases with noncontrast chest CT scans, in comparison with manual classification. The proposed algorithm achieves an overall accuracy of 94%, which is higher than the accuracy obtained using other CNN architectures and RF. Our method was also validated with contrast-enhanced CT scans of patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension to demonstrate that our model generalizes well to contrast-enhanced modalities. The proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods, paving the way for future use of 3-D CNN for artery/vein classification in CT images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Part I of this paper, an operational fully automated Landsat-like image spectral rule-based decision-tree classifier (LSRC), suitable for mapping radiometrically calibrated sevenband Landsat-4/-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat-7 Enhanced TM+ (ETM+) spaceborne images [eventually synthesized from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imaging sensor] into a discrete and finite set of spectral categories, has been downscaled to properly deal with spaceborne multispectral imaging sensors whose spectral resolution overlaps with, but is inferior to Landsat's, namely: 1) Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT)-4/-5, Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS)-1C/-1D/-P6 Linear Imaging Self- Scanner (LISS)-III, and IRS-P6 Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS); 2) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and Meteosat Second Generation (MSG); 3) Environmental Satellite (ENVISAT) Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR); 4) GeoEye-1, IKONOS-2, QuickBird-2, OrbView-3, TopSat, KOrean MultiPurpose SATellite (KOMPSAT)-2, FORMOsa SATellite (FORMOSAT)-2, Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Advanced Visible and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (AVNIR-2), RapidEye, WorldView-2, PLEIADES-1/-2, and SPOT-6/-7; and 5) Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), IRS-P6 LISS-IV, and SPOT-1/-2. LSRC, together with its five downscaled versions, identified, respectively, as the four-band SPOT-like SRC (SSRC), the four-band AVHRR-like SRC (AVSRC), the five-band AATSR-like SRC (AASRC), the four-band IKONOS-like SRC (ISRC), and the three-band DMClike SRC (DSRC), form the so-called integrated SRC system of systems. In this paper, first, the classification accuracy and robustness to changes in the input data set of SSRC, AVSRC, AASRC, ISRC, and DSRC are assessed, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in comparison with LSRC's. Next, ongoing and future SRC applications are presented and discussed. They encompass: 1) the implementation of operational two-stage stratified hierarchical Remote Sensing (RS) image understanding systems discussed in Part I of this paper; 2) the integration of near real-time satellite mapping services with Internet map servers; and 3) the development of a new approach to semantic querying of large-scale multisensor image databases. These experimental results and application examples prove that the integrated SRC system of systems is operational, namely, it is effective, near real-time, automatic, and robust to changes in the input data set. Therefore, SRC appears eligible for use in operational satellite-based measurement systems such as those envisaged by the ongoing international Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Programme and the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) system project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although being a frequently occurring phenomenon in spoken communication, speech overlaps did not obtain the deserved attention in research so far—in both Human-Human Interaction (HHI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It is common knowledge that overlaps can figure as a competitive, rude interruption as well as a cooperative, convenient feedback signal giving important insight on the course of the interaction—but how are they related to the internal state of the overlapping speaker or the overlapped speaker? In this paper, we investigate dyadic human-human interactions and focus on the relations between the emotional changes occurring around overlaps in both interaction participants. Further to an in-depth statistical analysis of the changes in control and valence levels with respect to the nature of the overlap, we also present a classification approach based on features derived from such emotional changes surrounding an overlap and compare the classification performance of these features to classic acoustic features. We show that the automatic classification of competitive and cooperative overlaps using the changes in valence and control levels of the overlapping speaker outperforms common approaches employing acoustic and linguistic features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an emotion-based music classification system using features from physiological signals. The proposed system integrates two functions; the first uses physiological sensors to recognize the emotions of users listening to music, and the second classifies music according to the feelings evoked in the listeners, without using physiological sensors. Moreover, to directly predict the user’s emotions from sensor data acquired through wearable physiological sensors, we developed and implemented a hierarchical inner attention-mechanism-based deep neural network. To relieve the discomfort of users wearing physiological sensors every time to receive content recommendations, the relation between emotion-specific features that are extracted from previously generated physiological signals, and musical features that are extracted from music is learned through a regression neural network. Based on these models, the proposed system classifies input music automatically according to users’ emotional reactions without measuring human physiological signals. The experimental results not only demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed automatic music classification framework, but also provide a new perspective in which human experience-based characteristics related to emotion are applied to artificial-intelligence-based content classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel framework for combining the strengths of machine-based and human-based emotion classification. Peoples’ ability to tell similar emotions apart is known as emotional granularity, which can be high or low, and is measurable. This paper proposes granularity-adapted classification that can be used as a front-end to drive a recommender, based on emotions from speech. In this context, incorrectly predicted peoples’ emotions could lead to poor recommendations, reducing user satisfaction. Instead of identifying a single emotion class, an adapted class is proposed, and is an aggregate of underlying emotion classes chosen based on granularity. In the recommendation context, the adapted class maps to a larger region in valence-arousal space, from which a list of potentially more similar content items is drawn, and recommended to the user. To determine the effectiveness of adapted classes, we measured the emotional granularity of subjects, and for each subject, used their pairwise similarity judgments of emotion to compare the effectiveness of adapted classes versus single emotion classes taken from a baseline system. A customized Euclidean-based similarity metric is used to measure the relative proximity of emotion classes. Results show that granularity-adapted classification can improve the potential similarity by up to 9.6 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses a novel optical nondestructive testing and automatic classification technique using customized image processing techniques. In contrast to conventional spatial analyses, which are highly susceptible to noise and human perception, our proposed transform domain approach provides a high degree of robustness and flexibility in feature selection, and hence a better classification efficiency. The presented algorithm classifies the part-under-test (PUT) into two bins of either acceptable or faulty using transform-domain techniques in conjunction with a classifier. Since the classification is critically dependent on the features extracted from stored images, a sophisticated scalable database was created. The initial database contains 100 parts with various degrees of reflectivity and surface conditions. The transformation algorithm relies on the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and rotated wavelet transform (RWT) for feature extraction, while a K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier is employed for PUT classification. The maximum accurate classification efficiency achieved is 80% and more than 93% by DWT and RWT, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Detecting and analyzing directional structures in images is important in many applications since one-dimensional patterns often correspond to important features such as object contours or trajectories. Classifying a structure as directional or nondirectional requires a measure to quantify the degree of directionality and a threshold, which needs to be chosen based on the statistics of the image. In order to do this, we model the image as a random field. So far, little research has been performed on analyzing directionality in random fields. In this paper, we propose a measure to quantify the degree of directionality based on the random monogenic signal, which enables a unique decomposition of a 2-D signal into local amplitude, local orientation, and local phase. We investigate the second-order statistical properties of the monogenic signal for isotropic, anisotropic, and unidirectional random fields. We analyze our measure of directionality for finite-size sample images and determine a threshold to distinguish between unidirectional and nonunidirectional random fields, which allows the automatic classification of images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wafer defect maps have different generation mechanisms according to the defect pattern, and automatic classification of wafer maps is therefore critical to reveal the root cause of the defects. In this paper, we examine the open set recognition problem, in which not only must wafer maps be classified using major defect patterns that are already known but also unknown defect patterns must also be detected. Our model is an ensemble model of a one-versus-one method that uses a convolutional neural network as the base classifier for wafer map classification. The proposed model calculates a weighted mean score for each defect pattern and determines the presence or absence of a pattern based on this score. The weight is calculated based on the proximity of data groups in the feature space and can be considered a support level at which a new wafer map belongs to a specific defect pattern. An untrained wafer map input into the model has a low support level and thus does not belong to any known defect pattern. An experiment was conducted using work-site failure bit count maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For pearls and other smooth alike lustrous jewels, the apparent shininess is one of the most important factors of beauty. This paper proposes an approach to automatic assessment of spherical surface quality in measure of shininess and smoothness using artificial vision. It traces a light ray emitted by a point source and images the resulting highlight patterns reflected from the surface. Once the reflected ray is observed as a white-clipping level in the camera image, the direction of the incident ray is determined and the specularity is estimated. As the specular exponent is the most important reason of surface shininess, the method proposed can efficiently determine the equivalent index of appearance for quality assessment. The observed highlight spot and specular exponent measurement described in this paper provide a way to measure the shininess and to relate the surface appearance with white-clipped image highlights. This is very useful to industrial applications for automatic classification of spherical objects. Both numerical simulations and practical experiments are carried out. Results of objective and subjective comparison show its satisfactory consistency with expert visual inspection. It also demonstrates the feasibility in practical industrial systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To date, the automatic or semiautomatic transformation of huge amounts of multisource multiresolution spaceborne imagery into information still remains far below reasonable expectations. The original contribution of this paper to existing knowledge on the development of operational automatic remote sensing image understanding systems (RS-IUSs) is fourfold. First, existing RS-IUS architectures are critically revised. In this review section, the two-stage stratified hierarchical RS-IUS model, originally proposed by Shackelford and Davis, is identified as a subclass of the parent class of multiagent hybrid systems for RS image understanding, which is potentially superior to the two-stage segment-based RS-IUS architecture that is currently considered the state-of-the-art in commercial RS image-processing software toolboxes. Second, this paper highlights the degree of novelty of an operational automatic near-real-time well-posed model-driven application-independent per-pixel Landsat-like spectral-rulebased decision-tree classifier (LSRC) recently presented in RS literature. Third, five original downscaled implementations of the LSRC system are proposed to be input with a multispectral image whose spectral resolution overlaps with, but is inferior to, Landsat's. These five downscaled LSRC implementations are identified as the Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre-like SRC, the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer-like SRC, the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer-like SRC, the IKONOS-like SRC, and the Disaster Monitoring Constellationlike SRC, respectively. LSRC, together with its five downscaled implementations, called the integrated SRC system of systems, is eligible for use as the automatic pixel-based preliminary classification first stage of a two-stage stratified hierarchical RS-IUS instantiation. Fourth, to sustain the feasibility of the new downscaled LSRC implementations, a novel vegetation spectral index is introduced and discussed. In Part II of this paper, experimental results are presented and discussed for the entire SRC family of classifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate grading for prostatic carcinoma in pathological images is important to prognosis and treatment planning. Since human grading is always time-consuming and subjective, this paper presents a computer-aided system to automatically grade pathological images according to Gleason grading system which is the most widespread method for histological grading of prostate tissues. We proposed two feature extraction methods based on fractal dimension to analyze variations of intensity and texture complexity in regions of interest. Each image can be classified into an appropriate grade by using Bayesian, k-NN, and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers, respectively. Leave-one-out and k-fold cross-validation procedures were used to estimate the correct classification rates (CCR). Experimental results show that 91.2%, 93.7%, and 93.7% CCR can be achieved by Bayesian, k-NN, and SVM classifiers, respectively, for a set of 205 pathological prostate images. If our fractal-based feature set is optimized by the sequential floating forward selection method, the CCR can be promoted up to 94.6%, 94.2%, and 94.6%, respectively, using each of the above three classifiers. Experimental results also show that our feature set is better than the feature sets extracted from multiwavelets, Gabor filters, and gray-level co-occurrence matrix methods because it has a much smaller size and still keeps the most powerful discriminating capability in grading prostate images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wafer maps contain information about various defect patterns on the wafer surface and automatic classification of these defects plays a vital role to find their root causes. Semiconductor engineers apply various methods for wafer defect classification such as manual visual inspection or machine learning-based algorithms by manually extracting useful features. However, these methods are unreliable, and their classification performance is also poor. Therefore, this paper proposes a deep learning-based convolutional neural network for automatic wafer defect identification (CNN-WDI). We applied a data augmentation technique to overcome the class-imbalance issue. The proposed model uses convolution layers to extract valuable features instead of manual feature extraction. Moreover, state-of-the-art regularization methods such as batch normalization and spatial dropout are used to improve the classification performance of the CNN-WDI model. The experimental results comparison using a real wafer dataset shows that our model outperformed all previously proposed machine learning-based wafer defect classification models. The average classification accuracy of the CNN-WDI model with nine different wafer map defects is 96.2%, which is an increment of 6.4% from the last highest average accuracy using the same dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have shown that the environment where people eat can affect their nutritional behavior. In this paper, we provide automatic tools for personalized analysis of a person's health habits by the examination of daily recorded egocentric photo-streams. Specifically, we propose a new automatic approach for the classification of food-related environments, that is able to classify up to 15 such scenes. In this way, people can monitor the context around their food intake in order to get an objective insight into their daily eating routine. We propose a model that classifies food-related scenes organized in a semantic hierarchy. Additionally, we present and make available a new egocentric dataset composed of more than 33 000 images recorded by a wearable camera, over which our proposed model has been tested. Our approach obtains an accuracy and F-score of 56% and 65%, respectively, clearly outperforming the baseline methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic classification of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals is important for diagnosing heart arrhythmias. A big challenge in automatic ECG classification is the variation in the waveforms and characteristics of ECG signals among different patients. To address this issue, this paper proposes adapting a patient-independent deep neural network (DNN) using the information in the patient-dependent identity vectors (i-vectors). The adapted networks, namely i-vector adapted patient-specific DNNs (iAP-DNNs), are tuned toward the ECG characteristics of individual patients. For each patient, his/her ECG waveforms are compressed into an i-vector using a factor analysis model. Then, this i-vector is injected into the middle hidden layer of the patient-independent DNN. Stochastic gradient descent is then applied to fine-tune the whole network to form a patient-specific classifier. As a result, the adaptation makes use of not only the raw ECG waveforms from the specific patient but also the compact representation of his/her ECG characteristics through the i-vector. Analysis on the hidden-layer activations shows that by leveraging the information in the i-vectors, the iAP-DNNs are more capable of discriminating normal heartbeats against arrhythmic heartbeats than the networks that use the patient-specific ECG only for the adaptation. Experimental results based on the MIT-BIH database suggest that the iAP-DNNs perform better than existing patient-specific classifiers in terms of various performance measures. In particular, the sensitivity and specificity of the existing methods are all under the receiver operating characteristic curves of the iAP-DNNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estimation of vascular network topology in complex networks is important in understanding the relationship between vascular changes and a wide spectrum of diseases. Automatic classification of the retinal vascular trees into arteries and veins is of direct assistance to the ophthalmologist in terms of diagnosis and treatment of eye disease. However, it is challenging due to their projective ambiguity and subtle changes in appearance, contrast, and geometry in the imaging process. In this paper, we propose a novel method that is capable of making the artery/vein (A/V) distinction in retinal color fundus images based on vascular network topological properties. To this end, we adapt the concept of dominant set clustering and formalize the retinal blood vessel topology estimation and the A/V classification as a pairwise clustering problem. The graph is constructed through image segmentation, skeletonization, and identification of significant nodes. The edge weight is defined as the inverse Euclidean distance between its two end points in the feature space of intensity, orientation, curvature, diameter, and entropy. The reconstructed vascular network is classified into arteries and veins based on their intensity and morphology. The proposed approach has been applied to five public databases, namely INSPIRE, IOSTAR, VICAVR, DRIVE, and WIDE, and achieved high accuracies of 95.1%, 94.2%, 93.8%, 91.1%, and 91.0%, respectively. Furthermore, we have made manual annotations of the blood vessel topologies for INSPIRE, IOSTAR, VICAVR, and DRIVE datasets, and these annotations are released for public access so as to facilitate researchers in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic and accurate classification of apoptosis, or programmed cell death, will facilitate cell biology research. The state-of-the-art approaches in apoptosis classification use deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). However, these networks are not efficient in encoding the part-whole relationships, thus requiring a large number of training samples to achieve robust generalization. This paper proposes an efficient variant of capsule networks (CapsNets) as an alternative to CNNs. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed CapsNets achieve competitive performances in target cell apoptosis classification, while significantly outperforming CNNs when the number of training samples is small. To utilize temporal information within microscopy videos, we propose a recurrent CapsNet constructed by stacking a CapsNet and a bi-directional long short-term recurrent structure. Our experiments show that when considering temporal constraints, the recurrent CapsNet achieves 93.8% accuracy and makes significantly more consistent prediction than NNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new technique for automatic monitoring of power quality events, which is based on the multiresolution S-transform and Parseval's theorem. In the proposed technique, the S-transform is used to produce instantaneous frequency vectors of the signals, and then the energies of these vectors, based on the Parseval's theorem, are utilized for automatically monitoring and classification of power quality events. The advantage of the proposed algorithm is its ability to distinguish different power quality classes easily. In addition, the magnitude, duration, and frequency content of the disturbances can be accurately identified in order to characterize the disturbances. The paper provides the theoretical background of the technique and presents a wide range of analyses to demonstrate its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gleason grading is a common method used by pathologists to determine the aggressivity of prostate cancer on the basis of histological slide preparations. The advantage of this grading system is a good correlation with the biological behavior of the tumor, while its drawback is the subjectivity underlying the judgements of pathologists. Therefore, an automation of Gleason grading would be desirable. In this paper, we examined 780 digitized grayscale images of 78 different cases, which were split into a training and a test set. We developed two methods based on combinations of morphological characteristics like area fraction, line length, and Euler number to classify into the categories "Gleason score <7" and "Gleason score ≥7." In particular, the distinction between these two classes has great impact on the prognosis of patients. The agreement of each method with visual diagnosis was 87.18% and 92.31% within the training set and 66.67% and 64.10% within the test set, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automatic classification of 3-D point clouds is publicly known as a challenging task in a complex road environment. Specifically, each point is automatically classified into a unique category label, and then, the labels are used as clues for semantic analysis and scene recognition. Instead of heuristically extracting handcrafted features in traditional methods to classify all points, we put forward an end-to-end octree-based fully convolutional network (FCN) to classify 3-D point clouds in an urban road environment. There are four contributions in this paper. The first is that the integration and comprehensive uses of OctNet and FCN greatly decrease the computing time and memory demands compared with a dense 3-D convolutional neural network (CNN). The second is that the octree-based network is strengthened by means of modifying the cross-entropy loss function to solve the problems of an unbalanced category distribution. The third is that an Inception-ResNet block is united with our network, which enables our 3-D CNN to effectively learn how to classify scenes containing objects at multiple scales and improve classification accuracy. The last is that an open source data set (HuangshiRoad data set) with ten different classes is introduced for 3-D point cloud classification. Three representative data sets [Semantic3D, WHU_MLS (blocks I and II), and HuangshiRoad] with different covered areas and numbers of points and classes are selected to evaluate our proposed method. The experimental results show that the overall classification accuracy is appreciable, with 89.4% for Semantic3D, 82.9% for WHU_MLS block I, 91.4% for WHU_MLS block II, and 94% for HuangshiRoad. Our deep learning approach can efficiently classify 3-D dense point clouds in an urban road environment measured by a mobile laser scanning (MLS) system or static LiDAR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automatic classification of breast cancer histopathological images has great significance in computer-aided diagnosis. Recently, deep learning via neural networks has enabled pattern detection and prediction using large, labeled datasets; whereas, collecting and annotating sufficient histological data using professional pathologists is time consuming, tedious, and extremely expensive. In the proposed paper, a deep active learning framework is designed and implemented for classification of breast cancer histopathological images, with the goal of maximizing the learning accuracy from very limited labeling. This method involves manual annotation of the most valuable unlabeled samples, which are then integrated into the training set. The model is then iteratively updated with an increasing training set. Here, two selection strategies are discussed for the proposed deep active learning framework: An entropy-based strategy and a confidence-boosting strategy. The proposed method has been validated using a publicly available breast cancer histopathological image dataset, wherein each image patch is binarily classified as benign or malignant. The experimental results demonstrate that, compared with a random selection, our proposed framework can reduce annotation costs up to 66.67%, with higher accuracy and less expensive annotation than standard query strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in ultra-high-throughput microscopy have enabled a new generation of cell classification methodologies using image-based cell phenotypes alone. In contrast to current single-cell analysis techniques that rely solely on slow and costly genetic/epigenetic analysis, these image-based analyses allow morphological profiling and screening of thousands or even millions of single cells at a fraction of the cost, and have been proven to demonstrate the statistical significance required for understanding the role of cell heterogeneity in diverse biological applications, ranging from cancer screening to drug candidate identification/validation processes. This paper examines the efficacies and opportunities presented by machine learning algorithms in processing large scale datasets with millions of label-free cell images. An automatic single-cell classification framework using convolutional neural network (CNN) has been developed. A comparative analysis of its efficiency in classifying large datasets against conventional k-nearest neighbors (kNN) and support vector machine (SVM) based methods are also presented. Experiments have shown that our proposed framework can efficiently identify multiple types cells with over $99\%$ accuracy based on the phenotypic label-free bright-field images; and CNN-based models perform well and relatively stable against data volume compared with kNN and SVM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exhaustive investigations of the ice sheet subsurface can be carried out by analyzing the information contained in the huge archives of radargrams acquired by dedicated radar sounder (RS) instruments. The analysis can be done by using properly designed automatic techniques for a quantitative, objective, and reliable extraction of information from radargrams. Unfortunately, the definition and development of such automatic techniques have only been marginally addressed in the literature. In this paper, we propose a novel and efficient system for the automatic classification of ice subsurface targets present in radargrams. The core of the system is represented by the extraction of a set of features for target discrimination. The features are based on both the specific statistical properties of the RS signal and the spatial distribution of the ice subsurface targets. Such features are then provided as input to an automatic classifier based on support vector machine. Experimental results obtained on two real-world data sets acquired by airborne-mounted RSs in large regions of Antarctica confirm the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed classification system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automatic classification of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals is of great clinical significance in eliminating the strenuous process of manually annotating ECG recordings. Although statistical models describing ECG signal dynamics currently exist, they depend considerably on a priori information and user-specified model parameters. Also, ECG beat morphologies, which vary greatly across different individuals and disease states, cannot easily be described by a single representation. In this paper, we propose sequential Bayesian based methods to effectively model and adaptively select parameters of ECG signals. We first consider an adaptive framework based on a sequential Bayesian tracking method that adaptively selects the best cardiac parameters by minimizing the estimation error and does not require early-stage processing to obtain prior signal information. We then present ECG modeling techniques using the interacting multiple model (IMM) and sequential Markov chain Monte Carlo (SMCMC) methods combined with simultaneous model selection. Both these methods can adaptively choose between different representations to model various ECG beat morphologies without requiring prior ECG information. The performance of the proposed algorithms is demonstrated using real ECG data. Finally, we develop a Bayesian maximum-likelihood based classifier to classify different types of cardiac arrhythmias using which, correction classification rates of 90% and 98% are obtained, when considering features obtained from the estimated model parameters of the adaptive framework, and both the IMM and SMCMC methods, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The integration of spatial context in the classification of hyperspectral images is known to be an effective way in improving classification accuracy. In this paper, a novel spectral-spatial classification framework based on edge-preserving filtering is proposed. The proposed framework consists of the following three steps. First, the hyperspectral image is classified using a pixelwise classifier, e.g., the support vector machine classifier. Then, the resulting classification map is represented as multiple probability maps, and edge-preserving filtering is conducted on each probability map, with the first principal component or the first three principal components of the hyperspectral image serving as the gray or color guidance image. Finally, according to the filtered probability maps, the class of each pixel is selected based on the maximum probability. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed edge-preserving filtering based classification method can improve the classification accuracy significantly in a very short time. Thus, it can be easily applied in real applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel technique for addressing domain adaptation (DA) problems with active learning (AL) in the classification of remote sensing images. DA models the important problem of adapting a supervised classifier trained on a given image (source domain) to the classification of another similar but not identical image (target domain) acquired on a different area. The main idea of the proposed approach is iteratively labeling and adding to the training set the minimum number of the most informative samples from the target domain, while removing the source-domain samples that do not fit with the distributions of the classes in the target domain. In this way, the classification system exploits already available information, i.e., the labeled samples of source domain, in order to minimize the number of target domain samples to be labeled, thus reducing the cost associated to the definition of the training set for the classification of the target domain. In addition, we define a convergence criterion that allows the technique to stop the iterative AL process on the target domain without relying on the availability of a test set for it. This is an important contribution, as in operational applications, it is not realistic to assume that a test set for the target domain is available. Experimental results obtained in the classification of very high resolution and hyperspectral images confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sound sample indexing usually deals with the recognition of the source/cause that has produced the sound. For abstract sounds, sound effects, unnatural, or synthetic sounds, this cause is usually unknown or unrecognizable. An efficient description of these sounds has been proposed by Schaeffer under the name morphological description. Part of this description consists in describing a sound by identifying the temporal evolution of its acoustic properties to a set of profiles. In this paper, we consider three morphological descriptions: dynamic profiles (ascending, descending, ascending/descending, stable, impulsive), melodic profiles (up, down, stable, up/down, down/up) and complex-iterative sound description (non-iterative, iterative, grain, repetition). We study the automatic indexing of a sound into these profiles. Because this automatic indexing is difficult using standard audio features, we propose new audio features to perform this task. The dynamic profiles are estimated by modeling the loudness over-time of a sound by a second-order B-spline model and derive features from this model. The melodic profiles are estimated by tracking over time the perceptual filter which has the maximum excitation. A function is derived from this track which is then modeled using a second-order B-spline model. The features are again derived from the B-spline model. The description of complex-iterative sounds is obtained by estimating the amount of repetition and the period of the repetition. These are obtained by computing an audio similarity function derived from an Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) similarity matrix. The proposed audio features are then tested for automatic classification. We consider three classification tasks corresponding to the three profiles. In each case, the results are compared with the ones obtained using standard audio features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of multilayer perceptron (MLP) networks as a tool for the classification of remotely sensed images has been already proven in past years. However, most of the studies consider images characterized by high spatial resolution (around 15-30 m) while a detailed analysis of the performance of this type of classifier on very high resolution images (around 1-2 m) such as those provided by the Quickbird satellite is still lacking. Moreover, the classification problem is normally understood as the classification of a single image while the capabilities of a single network of performing automatic classification and feature extraction over a collection of archived images has not been explored so far. In this paper, besides assessing the performance of MLP for the classification of very high resolution images, we investigate on the generalization capabilities of this type of algorithms with the purpose of using them as a tool for fully automatic classification of collections of satellite images, either at very high or at highresolution. In particular, applications to urban area monitoring have been addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent publications, we have presented a data-driven approach to representing the nonlinear structure of hyperspectral imagery using manifold coordinates. The approach relies on graph methods to derive geodesic distances on the high-dimensional hyperspectral data manifold. From these distances, a set of intrinsic manifold coordinates that parameterizes the data manifold is derived. Scaling the solution relied on divide-conquer-and-merge strategies for the manifold coordinates because of the computational and memory scaling of the geodesic coordinate calculations. In this paper, we improve the scaling performance of isometric mapping (ISOMAP) and achieve full-scene global manifold coordinates while removing artifacts generated by the original methods. The CPU time of the enhanced ISOMAP approach scales as O(N log²(N)), where N is the number of samples, while the memory requirement is bounded by O(N log(N)). Full hyperspectral scenes of 0(106) samples or greater are obtained via a reconstruction algorithm, which allows insertion of large numbers of samples into a representative ‘backbone’ manifold obtained for a smaller but representative set of O(105) samples. We provide a classification example using a coastal hyperspectral scene to illustrate the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper faces the problem of the automatic classification of the stresses affecting the quadrature amplitude modulation. This problem arises when a continuous monitoring system is needed for improving the quality of service in communication networks based on such a modulation scheme. In particular, a measurement method based on image processing is proposed. It automatically analyzes the constellation diagram and selects the stress actually present through a template matching technique. The results of the first simulations, carried out on signals affected by different stresses and SNRs, are presented and discussed. Some experimental results are also shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]