Artificial intelligence has significantly advanced skin cancer diagnosis by enabling rapid and accurate detection of malignant lesions. In this domain, most publicly available image datasets consist of single, isolated skin lesions positioned at the center of the image. While these lesion-centric datasets have been fundamental for developing diagnostic algorithms, they lack the context of the surrounding skin, which is critical for improving lesion detection. The iToBoS dataset was created to address this challenge. It includes 16,954 images of skin regions from 100 participants, captured using 3D total body photography. Each image roughly corresponds to a $7 \times 9$ cm section of skin with all suspicious lesions annotated using bounding boxes. Additionally, the dataset provides metadata such as anatomical location, age group, and sun damage score for each image. This dataset aims to facilitate training and benchmarking of algorithms, with the goal of enabling early detection of skin cancer and deployment of this technology in non-clinical environments.

We developed a generative patch based 3D image registration model that can register very high resolution images obtained from a biochemical process name tissue clearing. Tissue clearing process removes lipids and fats from the tissue and make the tissue transparent. When cleared tissues are imaged with Light-sheet fluorescent microscopy, the resulting images give a clear window to the cellular activities and dynamics inside the tissue.Thus the images obtained are very rich with cellular information and hence their resolution is extremely high (eg .2560x2160x676). Analyzing images with such high resolution is a difficult task for any image analysis pipeline.Image registration is a common step in image analysis pipeline when comparison between images are required. Traditional image registration methods fail to register images with such extant. In this paper we addressed this very high resolution image registration issue by proposing a patch-based generative network named InvGAN. Our proposed network can register very high resolution tissue cleared images. The tissue cleared dataset used in this paper are obtained from a tissue clearing protocol named CUBIC. We compared our method both with traditional and deep-learning based registration methods.Two different versions of CUBIC dataset are used, representing two different resolutions 25% and 100% respectively. Experiments on two different resolutions clearly show the impact of resolution on the registration quality. At 25% resolution, our method achieves comparable registration accuracy with very short time (7 minutes approximately). At 100% resolution, most of the traditional registration methods fail except Elastix registration tool.Elastix takes 28 hours to register where proposed InvGAN takes only 10 minutes.

Efficient surgery room scheduling is essential for hospital efficiency, patient satisfaction, and resource utilization. This study addresses this challenge by introducing a novel concept of Random-Key Optimizer (RKO), rigorously tested on literature and new, real-world inspired instances. Our combinatorial optimization problem incorporates multi-room scheduling, equipment scheduling, and complex availability constraints for rooms, patients, and surgeons, facilitating rescheduling and enhancing operational flexibility. The RKO approach represents solutions as points in a continuous space, which are then mapped in the problem solution space via a deterministic function known as a decoder. The core idea is to operate metaheuristics and heuristics in the random-key space, unaware of the original solution space. We design the Biased Random-Key Genetic Algorithm with $Q$-Learning, Simulated Annealing, and Iterated Local Search for use within an RKO framework, employing a single decoder function. The proposed metaheuristics are complemented by lower-bound formulations, providing optimal gaps for evaluating the effectiveness of the heuristic results. Our results demonstrate significant lower and upper bounds improvements for the literature instances, notably proving one optimal result. Furthermore, the best-proposed metaheuristic efficiently generates schedules for the newly introduced instances, even in highly constrained scenarios. This research offers valuable insights and practical solutions for improving surgery scheduling processes, offering tangible benefits to hospitals by optimising resource allocation, reducing patient wait times, and enhancing overall operational efficiency.

Keyword spotting (KWS) is one of the speech recognition tasks most sensitive to the quality of the feature representation. However, the research on KWS has traditionally focused on new model topologies, putting little emphasis on other aspects like feature extraction. This paper investigates the use of the multitaper technique to create improved features for KWS. The experimental study is carried out for different test scenarios, windows and parameters, datasets, and neural networks commonly used in embedded KWS applications. Experiment results confirm the advantages of using the proposed improved features.

Autonomous navigation in unstructured natural environments poses a significant challenge. In goal navigation tasks without prior information, the limited look-ahead of onboard sensors utilised by robots compromises path efficiency. We propose a novel approach that leverages an above-the-canopy aerial map for improved ground robot navigation. Our system utilises aerial lidar scans to create a 3D probabilistic occupancy map, uniquely incorporating the uncertainty in the aerial vehicle's trajectory for improved accuracy. Novel path planning cost functions are introduced, combining path length with obstruction risk estimated from the probabilistic map. The D-Star Lite algorithm then calculates an optimal (minimum-cost) path to the goal. This system also allows for dynamic replanning upon encountering unforeseen obstacles on the ground. Extensive experiments and ablation studies in simulated and real forests demonstrate the effectiveness of our system.

The lack of transparency and explainability hinders the clinical adoption of Machine learning (ML) algorithms. While explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) methods have been proposed, little research has focused on the agreement between these methods and expert clinical knowledge. This study applies current state-of-the-art explainability methods to clinical decision support algorithms developed for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) data to analyse the concordance between these factors and discusses causes for identified discrepancies from a clinical and technical perspective. Important factors for achieving trustworthy XAI solutions for clinical decision support are also discussed.

Today's post is slightly off-track. I was invited to the first Fast.AI unconference in Brisbane, Queensland this week. It was an honor to be part of the community and I'm having a blast meeting with so many brilliant AI researchers around the globe! In short, UnConferences are "unconventional conferences". Anyone can propose an agenda, organize a session to any topics they want.

My name is Amena Khatun, and I currently live in Australia with my partner and our son. I am working as a'Postdoctoral Fellow' at Queensland University and Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. My research interest is computer vision, deep learning, person re-identification, and security surveillance. In February 2017, my Ph.D. journey started in computer vision and deep learning at QUT. I am so thankful for the Australian Government RTP Scholarship, QUT HDR tuition Fees Sponsorship, and QUT Top-up Scholarship.

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Geo-tagged tweets can potentially help with sensing the interaction of people with their surrounding environment. Based on this hypothesis, this paper makes use of geotagged tweets in order to ascertain various land uses with a broader goal to help with urban/city planning. The proposed method utilises supervised learning to reveal spatial land use within cities with the help of Twitter activity signatures. Specifically, the technique involves using tweets from three cities of Australia namely Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Analytical results are checked against the zoning data provided by respective city councils and a good match is observed between the predicted land use and existing land zoning by the city councils. We show that geo-tagged tweets contain features that can be useful for land use identification.