26165513
Optimal Image Watermark Decoding
Not much has been done in utilizing the available information at the decoder to optimize the decoding performance of watermarking systems. This paper focuses on analyzing different decoding methods, namely, Minimum Distance, Maximum Likelihood and Maximum a-posteriori decoding given varying information at the decoder in the blind detection context. Specifically, we propose to employ Markov random fields to model the prior information given the embedded message is a structured logo. The application of these decoding methods in Quantization Index Modulation systems shows that the decoding performance can be improved by Maximum Likelihood decoding that exploits the property of the attack and Maximum a-posteriori decoding that utilizes the modeled prior information in addition to the property of the attack.
17819380
Feature Selection for Complex Patterns
Feature selection is an important data preprocessing step in data mining and pattern recognition. Many algorithms have been proposed in the past for simple patterns that can be characterised by a single feature vector. Unfortunately, these algorithms are hardly applicable to what are referred as complex patterns that have to be described by a finite set of feature vectors. This paper addresses the problem of feature selection for the complex patterns. First, we formulated the calculation of mutual information for complex patterns based on Gaussian mixture model. A hybrid feature selection algorithm is then proposed based on the formulated mutual information calculation (filter) and Baysian classification (wrapper). Experimental results on XM2VTS speaker recognition database have not only verified the performance of the proposed algorithm, but also demonstrated that traditional feature selection algorithms designed for simple patterns would perform poorly for complex patterns.
12496830
A Fast Algorithm for Color Image Segmentation
Based on K-means and a two-layer pyramid structure, a fast algorithm is proposed for color image segmentation. The algorithm employs two strategies. Firstly, a two-layer structure of a color image is established. Then, an improved K-means with integer based lookup table implementation is applied to each layer. The clustering result on the upper layer (lower resolution) is used to guide the clustering in the lower layer (higher resolution). Experiments have shown that the proposed algorithm is significantly faster than the original K-means algorithm while producing comparable segmentation results
6293846
Cryptographic Key Generation from Biometric Data Using Lattice Mapping
Crypto-biometric systems are recently emerging as an effective process of key management to address the security weakness of conventional key release systems using pass-codes, tokens or pattern recognition based biometrics. This paper presents a lattice mapping based fuzzy commitment method for cryptographic key generation from biometric data. The proposed method not only outputs high entropy keys, but also conceals the original biometric data such that it is impossible to recover the biometric data even when the stored information in the system is open to an attacker. Simulated results have demonstrated that its authentication accuracy is comparable to the well-known k-nearest neighbour classification
7583260
Simultaneous MAP estimation of inhomogeneity and segmentation of brain tissues from MR images
Intrascan and interscan intensity inhomogeneities have been identified as a common source of making many advanced segmentation techniques fail to produce satisfactory results in separating brains tissues from multi-spectral magnetic resonance (MR) images. A common solution is to correct the inhomogeneity before applying the segmentation techniques. This paper presents a method that is able to achieve simultaneous semi-supervised MAP (maximum a-posterior probability) estimation of the inhomogeneity field and segmentation of brain tissues, where the inhomogeneity is parameterized. Our method can incorporate any available incomplete training data and their contribution can be controlled in a flexible manner and therefore the segmentation of the brain tissues can be optimised. Experiments on both simulated and real MR images have demonstrated that the proposed method estimated the inhomogeneity field accurately and improved the segmentation.
6624035
Weakly Supervised Learning for Cross-document Person Name Disambiguation Supported by Information Extraction
It is fairly common that different people are associated with the same name. In tracking person entities in a large document pool, it is important to determine whether multiple mentions of the same name across documents refer to the same entity or not. Previous approach to this problem involves measuring context similarity only based on co-occurring words. This paper presents a new algorithm using information extraction support in addition to co-occurring words. A learning scheme with minimal supervision is developed within the Bayesian framework. Maximum entropy modeling is then used to represent the probability distribution of context similarities based on heterogeneous features. Statistical annealing is applied to derive the final entity coreference chains by globally fitting the pairwise context similarities. Benchmarking shows that our new approach significantly outperforms the existing algorithm by 25 percentage points in overall F-measure.
6001623
A segment alignment approach to protein comparison
MOTIVATION
Local structure segments (LSSs) are small structural units shared by unrelated proteins. They are extensively used in protein structure comparison, and predicted LSSs (PLSSs) are used very successfully in ab initio folding simulations. However, predicted or real LSSs are rarely exploited by protein sequence comparison programs that are based on position-by-position alignments.


RESULTS
We developed a SEgment Alignment algorithm (SEA) to compare proteins described as a collection of predicted local structure segments (PLSSs), which is equivalent to an unweighted graph (network). Any specific structure, real or predicted corresponds to a specific path in this network. SEA then uses a network matching approach to find two most similar paths in networks representing two proteins. SEA explores the uncertainty and diversity of predicted local structure information to search for a globally optimal solution. It simultaneously solves two related problems: the alignment of two proteins and the local structure prediction for each of them. On a benchmark of protein pairs with low sequence similarity, we show that application of the SEA algorithm improves alignment quality as compared to FFAS profile-profile alignment, and in some cases SEA alignments can match the structural alignments, a feat previously impossible for any sequence based alignment methods.
13091278
Dynamics of local search heuristics for the traveling salesman problem
This paper experimentally investigates the dynamical behavior of a search process in a local heuristic search system for a combinatorial optimization problem. Or-opt heuristic algorithm is chosen as the study subject, and the well-known traveling salesman problem (TSP) serves as a problem testbed. This study constructs the search trajectory by using the time-delay method, evaluates the dynamics of the local search system by estimating the correlation dimension for the search trajectory, and illustrates the transition of the local search process from high-dimensional stochastic to low dimensional chaotic behavior.
19300
Iterative Linear Quadratic Regulator Design for Nonlinear Biological Movement Systems
This paper presents an Iterative Linear Quadratic Regulator (ILQR) method for locally-optimal feedback control of nonlinear dynamical systems. The method is applied to a musculo-skeletal arm model with 10 state dimensions and 6 controls, and is used to compute energy-optimal reaching movements. Numerical comparisons with three existing methods demonstrate that the new method converges substantially faster and finds slightly better solutions.
5910842
Quantitative characterization of the transcriptional regulatory network in the yeast cell cycle
MOTIVATION
Genome-wide gene expression programs have been monitored and analyzed in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but how cells regulate global gene expression programs in response to environmental changes is still far from being understood. We present a systematic approach to quantitatively characterize the transcriptional regulatory network of the yeast cell cycle. For the interpretative purpose, 20 target genes were selected because their expression patterns fluctuated in a periodic manner concurrent with the cell cycle and peaked at different phases. In addition to the most significant five possible regulators of each specific target gene, the expression pattern of each target gene affected by synergy of the regulators during the cell cycle was characterized. Our first step includes modeling the dynamics of gene expression and extracting the transcription rate from a time-course microarray data. The second step embraces finding the regulators that possess a high correlation with the transcription rate of the target gene, and quantifying the regulatory abilities of the identified regulators.


RESULTS
Our network discerns not only the role of the activator or repressor for each specific regulator, but also the regulatory ability of the regulator to the transcription rate of the target gene. The highly coordinated regulatory network has identified a group of significant regulators responsible for the gene expression program through the cell cycle progress. This approach may be useful for computing the regulatory ability of the transcriptional regulatory networks in more diverse conditions and in more complex eukaryotes.


SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
Matlab code and test data are available at http://www.ee.nthu.edu.tw/~bschen/quantitative/regulatory_network.htm