Spot Detection for Laser Sensors Based on Annular Convolution Filtering.

Spot detection has attracted continuous attention for laser sensors with applications in communication, measurement, etc. The existing methods often directly perform binarization processing on the original spot image. They suffer from the interference of the background light. To reduce this kind of interference, we propose a novel method called annular convolution filtering (ACF). In our method, the region of interest (ROI) in the spot image is first searched by using the statistical properties of pixels. Then, the annular convolution strip is constructed based on the energy attenuation property of the laser and the convolution operation is performed in the ROI of the spot image. Finally, a feature similarity index is designed to estimate the parameters of the laser spot. Experiments on three datasets with different kinds of background light show the advantages of our ACF method, with comparison to the theoretical method based on international standard, the practical method used in the market products, and the recent benchmark methods AAMED and ALS.

Direct-Optimization-Based DC Dictionary Learning With the MCP Regularizer.

Direct-optimization-based dictionary learning has attracted increasing attention for improving computational efficiency. However, the existing direct optimization scheme can only be applied to limited dictionary learning problems, and it remains an open problem to prove that the whole sequence obtained by the algorithm converges to a critical point of the objective function. In this article, we propose a novel direct-optimization-based dictionary learning algorithm using the minimax concave penalty (MCP) as a sparsity regularizer that can enforce strong sparsity and obtain accurate estimation. For solving the corresponding optimization problem, we first decompose the nonconvex MCP into two convex components. Then, we employ the difference of the convex functions algorithm and the nonconvex proximal-splitting algorithm to process the resulting subproblems. Thus, the direct optimization approach can be extended to a broader class of dictionary learning problems, even if the sparsity regularizer is nonconvex. In addition, the convergence guarantee for the proposed algorithm can be theoretically proven. Our numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has good convergence performances in different cases and robust dictionary-recovery capabilities. When applied to sparse approximations, the proposed approach can obtain sparser and less error estimation than the different sparsity regularizers in existing methods. In addition, the proposed algorithm has robustness in image denoising and key-frame extraction.

Efficacy and safety of switching from bosentan or ambrisentan to macitentan in pulmonary arterial hypertension: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: There is little evidence of the effectiveness of switching from the endothelin receptor antagonists (ERAs) bosentan and ambrisentan to a novel ERA, macitentan, in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Therefore, a systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of patients with PAH switching from other ERAs to macitentan. Methods: We retrieved the relevant literature published before January 2022 for the meta-analysis from the PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library databases. Efficacy included changes in the 6-min walk distance (6MWD), World Health Organization functional class (WHO-FC), N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) levels, hemodynamics, echocardiography and survival. Results: Nine studies, consisting of 408 PAH patients, that met the inclusion criteria were included. The switch from bosentan or ambrisentan to macitentan effectively increased the 6MWD by 20.71 m (95% CI: 10.35-31.07, P < 0.00001, I 2 = 0%). Six months after conversion, the tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion was found to improve from 19.0 ± 4.0 to 21.0 ± 5.0 mm in adults and from 16.00 ± 5.0 to 18.25 ± 4.8 mm in children. Ordinal logistic regression showed that the WHO-FC significantly improved by 0.412 (95% CI: 0.187-0.908, P = 0.028). The switch did not show significant improvement in NT-proBNP levels. In addition, the switch was well tolerated. Conclusion: The switch from bosentan or ambrisentan to macitentan significantly increased the 6MWD in PAH patients, improved the WHO-FC, and exerted safety benefits. The effects of the switch on NT-proBNP levels, hemodynamics, and echocardiography still need to be further confirmed. Systematic review registration: [https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/], identifier [CRD42021292554].

Accelerated Log-Regularized Convolutional Transform Learning and Its Convergence Guarantee.

Convolutional transform learning (CTL), learning filters by minimizing the data fidelity loss function in an unsupervised way, is becoming very pervasive, resulting from keeping the best of both worlds: the benefit of unsupervised learning and the success of the convolutional neural network. There have been growing interests in developing efficient CTL algorithms. However, developing a convergent and accelerated CTL algorithm with accurate representations simultaneously with proper sparsity is an open problem. This article presents a new CTL framework with a log regularizer that can not only obtain accurate representations but also yield strong sparsity. To efficiently address our nonconvex composite optimization, we propose to employ the proximal difference of the convex algorithm (PDCA) which relies on decomposing the nonconvex regularizer into the difference of two convex parts and then optimizes the convex subproblems. Furthermore, we introduce the extrapolation technology to accelerate the algorithm, leading to a fast and efficient CTL algorithm. In particular, we provide a rigorous convergence analysis for the proposed algorithm under the accelerated PDCA. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can converge more stably to desirable solutions with lower approximation error and simultaneously with stronger sparsity and, thus, learn filters efficiently. Meanwhile, the convergence speed is faster than the existing CTL algorithms.

Uniform Distribution Non-Negative Matrix Factorization for Multiview Clustering.

Multiview data processing has attracted sustained attention as it can provide more information for clustering. To integrate this information, one often utilizes the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) scheme which can reduce the data from different views into the subspace with the same dimension. Motivated by the clustering performance being affected by the distribution of the data in the learned subspace, a tri-factorization-based NMF model with an embedding matrix is proposed in this article. This model tends to generate decompositions with uniform distribution, such that the learned representations are more discriminative. As a result, the obtained consensus matrix can be a better representative of the multiview data in the subspace, leading to higher clustering performance. Also, a new lemma is proposed to provide the formulas about the partial derivation of the trace function with respect to an inner matrix, together with its theoretical proof. Based on this lemma, a gradient-based algorithm is developed to solve the proposed model, and its convergence and computational complexity are analyzed. Experiments on six real-world datasets are performed to show the advantages of the proposed algorithm, with comparison to the existing baseline methods.

Electroencephalogram classification in motor-imagery brain-computer interface applications based on double-constraint nonnegative matrix factorization.

OBJECTIVE: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are aimed at providing a new way of communication between the human brain and external devices. One of the major tasks associated with the BCI system is to improve classification performance of the motor imagery (MI) signal. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are widely used for the MI BCI system. The raw EEG signals are usually non-stationary time series with weak class properties, degrading the classification performance. APPROACH: Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has been successfully applied to pattern extraction which provides meaningful data presentation. However, NMF is unsupervised and cannot make use of the label information. Based on the label information of MI EEG data, we propose a novel method, called double-constrained nonnegative matrix factorization (DCNMF), to improve the classification performance of NMF on MI BCI. The proposed method constructs a couple of label matrices as the constraints on the NMF procedure to make the EEGs with the same class labels have the similar representation in the low-dimensional space, while the EEGs with different class labels have dissimilar representations as much as possible. Accordingly, the extracted features obtain obvious class properties, which are optimal to the classification of MI EEG. MAIN RESULTS: This study is conducted on the BCI competition III datasets (I and IVa). The proposed method helps to achieve a higher average accuracy across two datasets (79.00% for dataset I, 77.78% for dataset IVa); its performance is about 10% better than the existing studies in the literature. SIGNIFICANCE: Our study provides a novel solution for MI BCI analysis from the perspective of label constraint; it provides convenience for semi-supervised learning of features and significantly improves the classification performance.

Heart sound classification using the SNMFNet classifier.

OBJECTIVE: Heart sound classification still suffers from the challenges involved in achieving high accuracy in the case of small samples. Dimension reduction attempts to extract low-dimensional features with more discriminability from high-dimensional spaces or raw data, and is popular in learning predictive models that target small sample problems. However, it can also be harmful to classification, because any reduction has the potential to lose information containing category attributes. APPROACH: For this, a novel SNMFNet classifier is designed to directly associate the dimension reduction process with the classification procedure used for promoting feature dimension reduction to follow the approach that is beneficial for classification, thus making the low-dimensional features more distinguishable and addressing the challenge facing heart sound classification in small samples. MAIN RESULTS: We evaluated our method and representative methods using a public heart sound dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms all comparative models with an obvious improvement in small samples. Furthermore, even if used with relatively sufficient samples, our method performs at least as well as the baseline that uses the same high-dimensional features. SIGNIFICANCE: The proposed SNMFNet classifier significantly to improves the small sample problem in heart sound classification.

Supervised threshold-based heart sound classification algorithm.

OBJECTIVE: Deep classification networks have been one of the predominant methods for classifying heart sound recordings. To satisfy their demand for sample size, the most commonly used method for data augmentation is that which divides each heart sound instance into a number of segments, with each segment labelled as the same category as its origin and used as a new sample for training or forecasting. However, performing this poses a crucial issue as to how to determine the category of a predicted heart sound instance from its segments' prediction results. APPROACH: To solve this issue, this paper establishes a mathematical formula to connect the classification performance of these heart sound instances with the prediction results of their segments via a threshold which is supervised by the training set. The optimal value of the proposed threshold is calculated by maximizing the prediction accuracy of the training instances. Seeking the optimal threshold by a gradient-based method, we prove that a continuous function can closely approximate a part of the function of accuracy which transforms the discrete function of accuracy into a continuous function. The optimal threshold is used to recognize the undetermined heart sound recording. MAIN RESULTS: Experimental results show the classification performance from a 10-fold cross-validation, measured by the commonly used scales of sensitivity, specificity and mean accuracy (MAcc). The proposed algorithm improves the MAcc by about 4% by modifying the baseline. In addition, the MAcc surpasses the champion of the PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2016. SIGNIFICANCE: Our study develops a methodology to determine the category of a predicted heart sound instance from its segments' prediction results, thus assisting in the data augmentation exercise which is necessary to provide sufficient data for deep classification networks. Our method significantly improves the classification performance.

Manifold optimization-based analysis dictionary learning with an ℓ1∕2-norm regularizer.

Recently there has been increasing attention towards analysis dictionary learning. In analysis dictionary learning, it is an open problem to obtain the strong sparsity-promoting solutions efficiently while simultaneously avoiding the trivial solutions of the dictionary. In this paper, to obtain the strong sparsity-promoting solutions, we employ the ℓ1∕2 norm as a regularizer. The very recent study on ℓ1∕2 norm regularization theory in compressive sensing shows that its solutions can give sparser results than using the ℓ1 norm. We transform a complex nonconvex optimization into a number of one-dimensional minimization problems. Then the closed-form solutions can be obtained efficiently. To avoid trivial solutions, we apply manifold optimization to update the dictionary directly on the manifold satisfying the orthonormality constraint, so that the dictionary can avoid the trivial solutions well while simultaneously capturing the intrinsic properties of the dictionary. The experiments with synthetic and real-world data verify that the proposed algorithm for analysis dictionary learning can not only obtain strong sparsity-promoting solutions efficiently, but also learn more accurate dictionary in terms of dictionary recovery and image processing than the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Adaptive Method for Nonsmooth Nonnegative Matrix Factorization.

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is an emerging tool for meaningful low-rank matrix representation. In NMF, explicit constraints are usually required, such that NMF generates desired products (or factorizations), especially when the products have significant sparseness features. It is known that the ability of NMF in learning sparse representation can be improved by embedding a smoothness factor between the products. Motivated by this result, we propose an adaptive nonsmooth NMF (Ans-NMF) method in this paper. In our method, the embedded factor is obtained by using a data-related approach, so it matches well with the underlying products, implying a superior faithfulness of the representations. Besides, due to the usage of an adaptive selection scheme to this factor, the sparseness of the products can be separately constrained, leading to wider applicability and interpretability. Furthermore, since the adaptive selection scheme is processed through solving a series of typical linear programming problems, it can be easily implemented. Simulations using computer-generated data and real-world data show the advantages of the proposed Ans-NMF method over the state-of-the-art methods.

A Convex Geometry-Based Blind Source Separation Method for Separating Nonnegative Sources.

This paper presents a convex geometry (CG)-based method for blind separation of nonnegative sources. First, the unaccessible source matrix is normalized to be column-sum-to-one by mapping the available observation matrix. Then, its zero-samples are found by searching the facets of the convex hull spanned by the mapped observations. Considering these zero-samples, a quadratic cost function with respect to each row of the unmixing matrix, together with a linear constraint in relation to the involved variables, is proposed. Upon which, an algorithm is presented to estimate the unmixing matrix by solving a classical convex optimization problem. Unlike the traditional blind source separation (BSS) methods, the CG-based method does not require the independence assumption, nor the uncorrelation assumption. Compared with the BSS methods that are specifically designed to distinguish between nonnegative sources, the proposed method requires a weaker sparsity condition. Provided simulation results illustrate the performance of our method.

[A rapid fetal ECG acquisition system based on FT245RL].

A rapid fetal ECG signal acquisition system is designed, which includes three modules: a front-end signal acquisition module, a micro control module and a PC software application module. The first two modules are accomplished through the ADS1294 and the STM32F103 chips, respectively, and the third one is developed in VC++ platform. By using the FT245RL chip, the proposed system implements the serial-parallel conversion communication between ARM and PC, improving the data transmission rate largely. Also, it has a simple structure, with low power consumption and high precision. Furthermore, it can collect fetal ECG signals from mother's abdominal wall and convert them into the 24-bit digital signals.

Projection-pursuit-based method for blind separation of nonnegative sources.

This paper presents a projection pursuit (PP) based method for blind separation of nonnegative sources. First, the available observation matrix is mapped to construct a new mixing model, in which the inaccessible source matrix is normalized to be column-sum-to-1. Then, the PP method is proposed to solve this new model, where the mixing matrix is estimated column by column through tracing the projections to the mapped observations in specified directions, which leads to the recovery of the sources. The proposed method is much faster than Chan's method, which has similar assumptions to ours, due to the usage of optimal projection. It is also more advantageous in separating cross-correlated sources than the independence- and uncorrelation-based methods, as it does not employ any statistical information of the sources. Furthermore, the new method does not require the mixing matrix to be nonnegative. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of our method.

Nonnegative blind source separation by sparse component analysis based on determinant measure.

The problem of nonnegative blind source separation (NBSS) is addressed in this paper, where both the sources and the mixing matrix are nonnegative. Because many real-world signals are sparse, we deal with NBSS by sparse component analysis. First, a determinant-based sparseness measure, named D-measure, is introduced to gauge the temporal and spatial sparseness of signals. Based on this measure, a new NBSS model is derived, and an iterative sparseness maximization (ISM) approach is proposed to solve this model. In the ISM approach, the NBSS problem can be cast into row-to-row optimizations with respect to the unmixing matrix, and then the quadratic programming (QP) technique is used to optimize each row. Furthermore, we analyze the source identifiability and the computational complexity of the proposed ISM-QP method. The new method requires relatively weak conditions on the sources and the mixing matrix, has high computational efficiency, and is easy to implement. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

Minimum-volume-constrained nonnegative matrix factorization: enhanced ability of learning parts.

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) with minimum-volume-constraint (MVC) is exploited in this paper. Our results show that MVC can actually improve the sparseness of the results of NMF. This sparseness is L(0)-norm oriented and can give desirable results even in very weak sparseness situations, thereby leading to the significantly enhanced ability of learning parts of NMF. The close relation between NMF, sparse NMF, and the MVC_NMF is discussed first. Then two algorithms are proposed to solve the MVC_NMF model. One is called quadratic programming_MVC_NMF (QP_MVC_NMF) which is based on quadratic programming and the other is called negative glow_MVC_NMF (NG_MVC_NMF) because it uses multiplicative updates incorporating natural gradient ingeniously. The QP_MVC_NMF algorithm is quite efficient for small-scale problems and the NG_MVC_NMF algorithm is more suitable for large-scale problems. Simulations show the efficiency and validity of the proposed methods in applications of blind source separation and human face images analysis.

Online blind source separation using incremental nonnegative matrix factorization with volume constraint.

Online blind source separation (BSS) is proposed to overcome the high computational cost problem, which limits the practical applications of traditional batch BSS algorithms. However, the existing online BSS methods are mainly used to separate independent or uncorrelated sources. Recently, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) shows great potential to separate the correlative sources, where some constraints are often imposed to overcome the non-uniqueness of the factorization. In this paper, an incremental NMF with volume constraint is derived and utilized for solving online BSS. The volume constraint to the mixing matrix enhances the identifiability of the sources, while the incremental learning mode reduces the computational cost. The proposed method takes advantage of the natural gradient based multiplication updating rule, and it performs especially well in the recovery of dependent sources. Simulations in BSS for dual-energy X-ray images, online encrypted speech signals, and high correlative face images show the validity of the proposed method.

Blind spectral unmixing based on sparse nonnegative matrix factorization.

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is a widely used method for blind spectral unmixing (SU), which aims at obtaining the endmembers and corresponding fractional abundances, knowing only the collected mixing spectral data. It is noted that the abundance may be sparse (i.e., the endmembers may be with sparse distributions) and sparse NMF tends to lead to a unique result, so it is intuitive and meaningful to constrain NMF with sparseness for solving SU. However, due to the abundance sum-to-one constraint in SU, the traditional sparseness measured by L0/L1-norm is not an effective constraint any more. A novel measure (termed as S-measure) of sparseness using higher order norms of the signal vector is proposed in this paper. It features the physical significance. By using the S-measure constraint (SMC), a gradient-based sparse NMF algorithm (termed as NMF-SMC) is proposed for solving the SU problem, where the learning rate is adaptively selected, and the endmembers and abundances are simultaneously estimated. In the proposed NMF-SMC, there is no pure index assumption and no need to know the exact sparseness degree of the abundance in prior. Yet, it does not require the preprocessing of dimension reduction in which some useful information may be lost. Experiments based on synthetic mixtures and real-world images collected by AVIRIS and HYDICE sensors are performed to evaluate the validity of the proposed method.

Mixing matrix estimation from sparse mixtures with unknown number of sources.

In blind source separation, many methods have been proposed to estimate the mixing matrix by exploiting sparsity. However, they often need to know the source number a priori, which is very inconvenient in practice. In this paper, a new method, namely nonlinear projection and column masking (NPCM), is proposed to estimate the mixing matrix. A major advantage of NPCM is that it does not need any knowledge of the source number. In NPCM, the objective function is based on a nonlinear projection and its maxima just correspond to the columns of the mixing matrix. Thus a column can be estimated first by locating a maximum and then deflated by a masking operation. This procedure is repeated until the evaluation of the objective function decreases to zero dramatically. Thus the mixing matrix and the number of sources are estimated simultaneously. Because the masking procedure may result in some small and useless local maxima, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is introduced to optimize the objective function. Feasibility and efficiency of PSO are also discussed. Comparative experimental results show the efficiency of NPCM, especially in the cases where the number of sources is unknown and the sources are relatively less sparse.

Nonorthogonal approximate joint diagonalization with well-conditioned diagonalizers.

To make the results reasonable, existing joint diagonalization algorithms have imposed a variety of constraints on diagonalizers. Actually, those constraints can be imposed uniformly by minimizing the condition number of diagonalizers. Motivated by this, the approximate joint diagonalization problem is reviewed as a multiobjective optimization problem for the first time. Based on this, a new algorithm for nonorthogonal joint diagonalization is developed. The new algorithm yields diagonalizers which not only minimize the diagonalization error but also have as small condition numbers as possible. Meanwhile, degenerate solutions are avoided strictly. Besides, the new algorithm imposes few restrictions on the target set of matrices to be diagonalized, which makes it widely applicable. Primary results on convergence are presented and we also show that, for exactly jointly diagonalizable sets, no local minima exist and the solutions are unique under mild conditions. Extensive numerical simulations illustrate the performance of the algorithm and provide comparison with other leading diagonalization methods. The practical use of our algorithm is shown for blind source separation (BSS) problems, especially when ill-conditioned mixing matrices are involved.

On blind separability based on the temporal predictability method.

This letter discusses blind separability based on temporal predictability (Stone, 2001 ; Xie, He, & Fu, 2005 ). Our results show that the sources are separable using the temporal predictability method if and only if they have different temporal structures (i.e., autocorrelations). Consequently, the applicability and limitations of the temporal predictability method are clarified. In addition, instead of using generalized eigendecomposition, we suggest using joint approximate diagonalization algorithms to improve the robustness of the method. A new criterion is presented to evaluate the separation results. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical results.