Ranking methods or models based on their performance is of prime importance but is tricky because performance is fundamentally multidimensional. In the case of classification, precision and recall are scores with probabilistic interpretations that are both important to consider and complementary. The rankings induced by these two scores are often in partial contradiction. In practice, therefore, it is extremely useful to establish a compromise between the two views to obtain a single, global ranking. Over the last fifty years or so,it has been proposed to take a weighted harmonic mean, known as the F-score, F-measure, or $F_β$. Generally speaking, by averaging basic scores, we obtain a score that is intermediate in terms of values. However, there is no guarantee that these scores lead to meaningful rankings and no guarantee that the rankings are good tradeoffs between these base scores. Given the ubiquity of $F_β$ scores in the literature, some clarification is in order. Concretely: (1) We establish that $F_β$-induced rankings are meaningful and define a shortest path between precision- and recall-induced rankings. (2) We frame the problem of finding a tradeoff between two scores as an optimization problem expressed with Kendall rank correlations. We show that $F_1$ and its skew-insensitive version are far from being optimal in that regard. (3) We provide theoretical tools and a closed-form expression to find the optimal value for $β$ for any distribution or set of performances, and we illustrate their use on six case studies.

While the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, its long-term effects persist through Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), commonly known as Long COVID. There remains substantial uncertainty regarding both its duration and optimal management strategies. PASC manifests as a diverse array of persistent or newly emerging symptoms--ranging from fatigue, dyspnea, and neurologic impairments (e.g., brain fog), to cardiovascular, pulmonary, and musculoskeletal abnormalities--that extend beyond the acute infection phase. This heterogeneous presentation poses substantial challenges for clinical assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning. In this paper, we focus on imaging findings that may suggest fibrotic damage in the lungs, a critical manifestation characterized by scarring of lung tissue, which can potentially affect long-term respiratory function in patients with PASC. This study introduces a novel multi-center chest CT analysis framework that combines deep learning and radiomics for fibrosis prediction. Our approach leverages convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and interpretable feature extraction, achieving 82.2% accuracy and 85.5% AUC in classification tasks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of Grad-CAM visualization and radiomics-based feature analysis in providing clinically relevant insights for PASC-related lung fibrosis prediction. Our findings highlight the potential of deep learning-driven computational methods for early detection and risk assessment of PASC-related lung fibrosis--presented for the first time in the literature.

Image geolocalization, in which, traditionally, an AI model predicts the precise GPS coordinates of an image is a challenging task with many downstream applications. However, the user cannot utilize the model to further their knowledge other than the GPS coordinate; the model lacks an understanding of the location and the conversational ability to communicate with the user. In recent days, with tremendous progress of large multimodal models (LMMs) proprietary and open-source researchers have attempted to geolocalize images via LMMs. However, the issues remain unaddressed; beyond general tasks, for more specialized downstream tasks, one of which is geolocalization, LMMs struggle. In this work, we propose to solve this problem by introducing a conversational model GAEA that can provide information regarding the location of an image, as required by a user. No large-scale dataset enabling the training of such a model exists. Thus we propose a comprehensive dataset GAEA with 800K images and around 1.6M question answer pairs constructed by leveraging OpenStreetMap (OSM) attributes and geographical context clues. For quantitative evaluation, we propose a diverse benchmark comprising 4K image-text pairs to evaluate conversational capabilities equipped with diverse question types. We consider 11 state-of-the-art open-source and proprietary LMMs and demonstrate that GAEA significantly outperforms the best open-source model, LLaVA-OneVision by 25.69% and the best proprietary model, GPT-4o by 8.28%. Our dataset, model and codes are available

Glaucoma is a prevalent eye disease that progresses silently without symptoms. If not detected and treated early, it can cause permanent vision loss. Computer-assisted diagnosis systems play a crucial role in timely and efficient identification. This study introduces MaxGlaViT, a lightweight model based on the restructured Multi-Axis Vision Transformer (MaxViT) for early glaucoma detection. First, MaxViT was scaled to optimize block and channel numbers, resulting in a lighter architecture. Second, the stem was enhanced by adding attention mechanisms (CBAM, ECA, SE) after convolution layers to improve feature learning. Third, MBConv structures in MaxViT blocks were replaced by advanced DL blocks (ConvNeXt, ConvNeXtV2, InceptionNeXt). The model was evaluated using the HDV1 dataset, containing fundus images of different glaucoma stages. Additionally, 40 CNN and 40 ViT models were tested on HDV1 to validate MaxGlaViT's efficiency. Among CNN models, EfficientB6 achieved the highest accuracy (84.91%), while among ViT models, MaxViT-Tiny performed best (86.42%). The scaled MaxViT reached 87.93% accuracy. Adding ECA to the stem block increased accuracy to 89.01%. Replacing MBConv with ConvNeXtV2 further improved it to 89.87%. Finally, integrating ECA in the stem and ConvNeXtV2 in MaxViT blocks resulted in 92.03% accuracy. Testing 80 DL models for glaucoma stage classification, this study presents a comprehensive and comparative analysis. MaxGlaViT outperforms experimental and state-of-the-art models, achieving 92.03% accuracy, 92.33% precision, 92.03% recall, 92.13% f1-score, and 87.12% Cohen's kappa score.

Ranking entities such as algorithms, devices, methods, or models based on their performances, while accounting for application-specific preferences, is a challenge. To address this challenge, we establish the foundations of a universal theory for performance-based ranking. First, we introduce a rigorous framework built on top of both the probability and order theories. Our new framework encompasses the elements necessary to (1) manipulate performances as mathematical objects, (2) express which performances are worse than or equivalent to others, (3) model tasks through a variable called satisfaction, (4) consider properties of the evaluation, (5) define scores, and (6) specify application-specific preferences through a variable called importance. On top of this framework, we propose the first axiomatic definition of performance orderings and performance-based rankings. Then, we introduce a universal parametric family of scores, called ranking scores, that can be used to establish rankings satisfying our axioms, while considering application-specific preferences. Finally, we show, in the case of two-class classification, that the family of ranking scores encompasses well-known performance scores, including the accuracy, the true positive rate (recall, sensitivity), the true negative rate (specificity), the positive predictive value (precision), and F1. However, we also show that some other scores commonly used to compare classifiers are unsuitable to derive performance orderings satisfying the axioms. Therefore, this paper provides the computer vision and machine learning communities with a rigorous framework for evaluating and ranking entities.

In the computer vision and machine learning communities, as well as in many other research domains, rigorous evaluation of any new method, including classifiers, is essential. One key component of the evaluation process is the ability to compare and rank methods. However, ranking classifiers and accurately comparing their performances, especially when taking application-specific preferences into account, remains challenging. For instance, commonly used evaluation tools like Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) and Precision/Recall (PR) spaces display performances based on two scores. Hence, they are inherently limited in their ability to compare classifiers across a broader range of scores and lack the capability to establish a clear ranking among classifiers. In this paper, we present a novel versatile tool, named the Tile, that organizes an infinity of ranking scores in a single 2D map for two-class classifiers, including common evaluation scores such as the accuracy, the true positive rate, the positive predictive value, Jaccard's coefficient, and all F-beta scores. Furthermore, we study the properties of the underlying ranking scores, such as the influence of the priors or the correspondences with the ROC space, and depict how to characterize any other score by comparing them to the Tile. Overall, we demonstrate that the Tile is a powerful tool that effectively captures all the rankings in a single visualization and allows interpreting them.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most widespread liver disorders on a global scale, posing a significant threat of progressing to more severe conditions like nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Diagnosing and staging NAFLD presents challenges due to its non-specific symptoms and the invasive nature of liver biopsies. Our research introduces a novel artificial intelligence cascade model employing ensemble learning and feature fusion techniques. We developed a non-invasive, robust, and reliable diagnostic artificial intelligence tool that utilizes anthropometric and laboratory parameters, facilitating early detection and intervention in NAFLD progression. Our novel artificial intelligence achieved an 86% accuracy rate for the NASH steatosis staging task (non-NASH, steatosis grade 1, steatosis grade 2, and steatosis grade 3) and an impressive 96% AUC-ROC for distinguishing between NASH (steatosis grade 1, grade 2, and grade3) and non-NASH cases, outperforming current state-of-the-art models. This notable improvement in diagnostic performance underscores the potential application of artificial intelligence in the early diagnosis and treatment of NAFLD, leading to better patient outcomes and a reduced healthcare burden associated with advanced liver disease.

The estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR) is an essential indicator of kidney function in clinical practice. Although traditional equations and Machine Learning (ML) models using clinical and laboratory data can estimate eGFR, accurately predicting future eGFR levels remains a significant challenge for nephrologists and ML researchers. Recent advances demonstrate that Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) can serve as robust foundation models for diverse applications. This study investigates the potential of LMMs to predict future eGFR levels with a dataset consisting of laboratory and clinical values from 50 patients. By integrating various prompting techniques and ensembles of LMMs, our findings suggest that these models, when combined with precise prompts and visual representations of eGFR trajectories, offer predictive performance comparable to existing ML models. This research extends the application of foundation models and suggests avenues for future studies to harness these models in addressing complex medical forecasting challenges.

Airplane detection from satellite imagery is a challenging task due to the complex backgrounds in the images and differences in data acquisition conditions caused by the sensor geometry and atmospheric effects. Deep learning methods provide reliable and accurate solutions for automatic detection of airplanes; however, huge amount of training data is required to obtain promising results. In this study, we create a novel airplane detection dataset called High Resolution Planes (HRPlanes) by using images from Google Earth (GE) and labeling the bounding box of each plane on the images. HRPlanes include GE images of several different airports across the world to represent a variety of landscape, seasonal and satellite geometry conditions obtained from different satellites. We evaluated our dataset with two widely used object detection methods namely YOLOv4 and Faster R-CNN. Our preliminary results show that the proposed dataset can be a valuable data source and benchmark data set for future applications. Moreover, proposed architectures and results of this study could be used for transfer learning of different datasets and models for airplane detection.

This paper explores the use of XGBoost for composite quantile regression. XGBoost is a highly popular model renowned for its flexibility, efficiency, and capability to deal with missing data. The optimization uses a second order approximation of the loss function, complicating the use of loss functions with a zero or vanishing second derivative. Quantile regression -- a popular approach to obtain conditional quantiles when point estimates alone are insufficient -- unfortunately uses such a loss function, the pinball loss. Existing workarounds are typically inefficient and can result in severe quantile crossings. In this paper, we present a smooth approximation of the pinball loss, the arctan pinball loss, that is tailored to the needs of XGBoost. Specifically, contrary to other smooth approximations, the arctan pinball loss has a relatively large second derivative, which makes it more suitable to use in the second order approximation. Using this loss function enables the simultaneous prediction of multiple quantiles, which is more efficient and results in far fewer quantile crossings.