Purpose: To introduce a combined machine learning (ML) and physics-based image reconstruction framework that enables navigator-free, highly accelerated multishot echo planar imaging (msEPI), and demonstrate its application in high-resolution structural imaging. Methods: Singleshot EPI is an efficient encoding technique, but does not lend itself well to high-resolution imaging due to severe distortion artifacts and blurring. While msEPI can mitigate these artifacts, high-quality msEPI has been elusive because of phase mismatch arising from shot-to-shot physiological variations which disrupt the combination of the multiple-shot data into a single image. We employ Deep Learning to obtain an interim magnitude-valued image with minimal artifacts, which permits estimation of image phase variations due to shot-to-shot physiological changes. These variations are then included in a Joint Virtual Coil Sensitivity Encoding (JVC-SENSE) reconstruction to utilize data from all shots and improve upon the ML solution. Results: Our combined ML + physics approach enabled R=8-fold acceleration from 2 EPI-shots while providing 1.8-fold error reduction compared to the MUSSELS, a state-of-the-art reconstruction technique, which is also used as an input to our ML network. Using 3 shots allowed us to push the acceleration to R=10-fold, where we obtained a 1.7-fold error reduction over MUSSELS. Conclusion: Combination of ML and JVC-SENSE enabled navigator-free msEPI at higher accelerations than previously possible while using fewer shots, with reduced vulnerability to poor generalizability and poor acceptance of end-to-end ML approaches.

Acquisition of labeled training samples for affective computing is usually costly and time-consuming, as affects are intrinsically subjective, subtle and uncertain, and hence multiple human assessors are needed to evaluate each affective sample. Particularly, for affect estimation in the 3D space of valence, arousal and dominance, each assessor has to perform the evaluations in three dimensions, which makes the labeling problem even more challenging. Many sophisticated machine learning approaches have been proposed to reduce the data labeling requirement in various other domains, but so far few have considered affective computing. This paper proposes two multi-task active learning for regression approaches, which select the most beneficial samples to label, by considering the three affect primitives simultaneously. Experimental results on the VAM corpus demonstrated that our optimal sample selection approaches can result in better estimation performance than random selection and several traditional single-task active learning approaches. Thus, they can help alleviate the data labeling problem in affective computing, i.e., better estimation performance can be obtained from fewer labeling queries.

Many machine learning classifiers are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, inputs with perturbations designed to intentionally trigger misclassification. Modern adversarial methods either directly alter pixel colors, or "paint" colors onto a 3D shapes. We propose novel adversarial attacks that directly alter the geometry of 3D objects and/or manipulate the lighting in a virtual scene. We leverage a novel differentiable renderer that is efficient to evaluate and analytically differentiate. Our renderer generates images realistic enough for correct classification by common pre-trained models, and we use it to design physical adversarial examples that consistently fool these models. We conduct qualitative and quantitate experiments to validate our adversarial geometry and adversarial lighting attack capabilities.

Almost all EEG-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) need some labeled subject-specific data to calibrate a new subject, as neural responses are different across subjects to even the same stimulus. So, a major challenge in developing high-performance and user-friendly BCIs is to cope with such individual differences so that the calibration can be reduced or even completely eliminated. This paper focuses on the latter. More specifically, we consider an offline application scenario, in which we have unlabeled EEG trials from a new subject, and would like to accurately label them by leveraging auxiliary labeled EEG trials from other subjects in the same task. To accommodate the individual differences, we propose a novel unsupervised approach to align the EEG trials from different subjects in the Euclidean space to make them more consistent. It has three desirable properties: 1) the aligned trial lie in the Euclidean space, which can be used by any Euclidean space signal processing and machine learning approach; 2) it can be computed very efficiently; and, 3) it does not need any labeled trials from the new subject. Experiments on motor imagery and event-related potentials demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach.

Abstract--In near future, vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as cyclists and pedestrians will be equipped with smart devices and wearables which are capable to communicate with intelligent vehicles and other traffic participants. Road users are then able to cooperate on different levels, such as in cooperative intention detection for advanced VRU protection. Smart devices can be used to detect intentions, e.g., an occluded cyclist intending to cross the road, to warn vehicles of VRUs, and prevent potential collisions. This article presents a human activity recognition approach to detect the starting movement of cyclists wearing smart devices. We propose a novel two-stage feature selection procedure using a score specialized for robust starting detection reducing the false positive detections and leading to understandable and interpretable features. The detection is modelled as a classification problem and realized by means of a machine learning classifier. We introduce an auxiliary class, that models starting movements and allows to integrate early movement indicators, i.e., body part movements indicating future behaviour. In this way we improve the robustness and reduce the detection time of the classifier. Our empirical studies with real-world data originating from experiments which involve 49 test subjects and consists of 84 starting motions show that we are able to detect the starting movements early. Investigations concerning the device wearing location show that for devices worn in the trouser pocket the detector has less false detections and detects starting movements faster on average. We found that we can further improve the results when we train distinct classifiers for different wearing locations. In our work, we envision future mixed traffic scenarios where automated cars, trucks, sensor-equipped infrastructure, and other road users equipped with smart devices or other wearables are interconnected by means of ad hoc networks. This allows the traffic participants to cooperate, i.e., determine and maintain local models of the surrounding traffic situations. Vulnerable road users (VRUs) will still play an important role in future urban traffic.

Quantum computers can offer dramatic improvements over classical devices for data analysis tasks such as prediction and classification. However, less is known about the advantages that quantum computers may bring in the setting of reinforcement learning, where learning is achieved via interaction with a task environment. Here, we consider a special case of reinforcement learning, where the task environment allows quantum access. In addition, we impose certain "naturalness" conditions on the task environment, which rule out the kinds of oracle problems that are studied in quantum query complexity (and for which quantum speedups are well-known). Within this framework of quantum-accessible reinforcement learning environments, we demonstrate that quantum agents can achieve exponential improvements in learning efficiency, surpassing previous results that showed only quadratic improvements. A key step in the proof is to construct task environments that encode well-known oracle problems, such as Simon's problem and Recursive Fourier Sampling, while satisfying the above "naturalness" conditions for reinforcement learning. Our results suggest that quantum agents may perform well in certain game-playing scenarios, where the game has recursive structure, and the agent can learn by playing against itself.

Embedded, continual learning for autonomous and adaptive behavior is a key application of neuromorphic hardware. However, neuromorphic implementations of embedded learning at large scales that are both flexible and efficient have been hindered by a lack of a suitable algorithmic framework. As a result, the most neuromorphic hardware is trained off-line on large clusters of dedicated processors or GPUs and transferred post hoc to the device. We address this by introducing the neural and synaptic array transceiver (NSAT), a neuromorphic computational framework facilitating flexible and efficient embedded learning by matching algorithmic requirements and neural and synaptic dynamics. NSAT supports event-driven supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning algorithms including deep learning. We demonstrate the NSAT in a wide range of tasks, including the simulation of Mihalas-Niebur neuron, dynamic neural fields, event-driven random back-propagation for event-based deep learning, event-based contrastive divergence for unsupervised learning, and voltage-based learning rules for sequence learning. We anticipate that this contribution will establish the foundation for a new generation of devices enabling adaptive mobile systems, wearable devices, and robots with data-driven autonomy.

In this paper, we propose a novel Question-Guided Hybrid Convolution (QGHC) network for Visual Question Answering (VQA). Most state-of-the-art VQA methods fuse the high-level textual and visual features from the neural network and abandon the visual spatial information when learning multi-modal features. To address these problems, question-guided kernels generated from the input question are designed to convolute with visual features for capturing the textual and visual relationship in the early stage. The question-guided convolution can tightly couple the textual and visual information but also introduce more parameters when learning kernels. We apply the group convolution, which consists of question-independent kernels and question-dependent kernels, to reduce the parameter size and alleviate over-fitting. The hybrid convolution can generate discriminative multi-modal features with fewer parameters. The proposed approach is also complementary to existing bilinear pooling fusion and attention based VQA methods. By integrating with them, our method could further boost the performance.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is the most popular form of input for brain computer interfaces (BCIs). However, it can be easily contaminated by various artifacts and noise, e.g., eye blink, muscle activities, powerline noise, etc. Therefore, the EEG signals are often filtered both spatially and temporally to increase the signal-to-noise ratio before they are fed into a machine learning algorithm for recognition. This paper considers spatial filtering, particularly, the common spatial pattern (CSP) filters for EEG classification. In binary classification, CSP seeks a set of filters to maximize the variance for one class while minimizing it for the other. We first introduce the traditional solution, and then a new solution based on a slightly different objective function. We performed comprehensive experiments on motor imagery to compare the two approaches, and found that generally the traditional CSP solution still gives better results. We also showed that adding regularization to the covariance matrices can improve the final classification performance, no matter which objective function is used.

Consider what healthcare systems are faced with today: People are living longer, but having fewer children. Many countries are ill-equipped to support and care for a growing number of elderly citizens. The prevalence of chronic diseases brings an added layer of complexity into the mix – and healthcare insurers are racing to adapt, notes Arvind Mathur, Chief Information Technology Officer of Prudential Singapore. "Traditionally, insurance has been defined in certain ways, with very specific kinds of products and capabilities," he tells GovInsider. "But as the needs are changing and as our consumers are evolving, those products and solutions are no longer sufficient."