Parameter identification for marine ecosystem models is important for the assessment and validation of marine ecosystem models against observational data. The surrogate-based optimization (SBO) is a computationally efficient method to optimize complex models. SBO replaces the computationally expensive (high-fidelity) model by a surrogate constructed from a less accurate but computationally cheaper (low-fidelity) model in combination with an appropriate correction approach, which improves the accuracy of the low-fidelity model. To construct a computationally cheap low-fidelity model, we tested three different approaches to compute an approximation of the annual periodic solution (i.e., a steady annual cycle) of a marine ecosystem model: firstly, a reduced number of spin-up iterations (several decades instead of millennia), secondly, an artificial neural network (ANN) approximating the steady annual cycle and, finally, a combination of both approaches. Except for the low-fidelity model using only the ANN, the SBO yielded a solution close to the target and reduced the computational effort significantly. If an ANN approximating appropriately a marine ecosystem model is available, the SBO using this ANN as low-fidelity model presents a promising and computational efficient method for the validation.
Computational models of the human head are promising tools for estimating the impact-induced response of brain, and thus play an important role in the prediction of traumatic brain injury. Modern biofidelic head model simulations are associated with very high computational cost, and high-dimensional inputs and outputs, which limits the applicability of traditional uncertainty quantification (UQ) methods on these systems. In this study, a two-stage, data-driven manifold learning-based framework is proposed for UQ of computational head models. This framework is demonstrated on a 2D subject-specific head model, where the goal is to quantify uncertainty in the simulated strain fields (i.e., output), given variability in the material properties of different brain substructures (i.e., input). In the first stage, a data-driven method based on multi-dimensional Gaussian kernel-density estimation and diffusion maps is used to generate realizations of the input random vector directly from the available data. Computational simulations of a small number of realizations provide input-output pairs for training data-driven surrogate models in the second stage. The surrogate models employ nonlinear dimensionality reduction using Grassmannian diffusion maps, Gaussian process regression to create a low-cost mapping between the input random vector and the reduced solution space, and geometric harmonics models for mapping between the reduced space and the Grassmann manifold. It is demonstrated that the surrogate models provide highly accurate approximations of the computational model while significantly reducing the computational cost. Monte Carlo simulations of the surrogate models are used for uncertainty propagation. UQ of strain fields highlight significant spatial variation in model uncertainty, and reveal key differences in uncertainty among commonly used strain-based brain injury predictor variables.
Exploiting data invariances is crucial for efficient learning in both artificial and biological neural circuits. Understanding how neural networks can discover appropriate representations capable of harnessing the underlying symmetries of their inputs is thus crucial in machine learning and neuroscience. Convolutional neural networks, for example, were designed to exploit translation symmetry and their capabilities triggered the first wave of deep learning successes. However, learning convolutions directly from translation-invariant data with a fully-connected network has so far proven elusive. Here, we show how initially fully-connected neural networks solving a discrimination task can learn a convolutional structure directly from their inputs, resulting in localised, space-tiling receptive fields. These receptive fields match the filters of a convolutional network trained on the same task. By carefully designing data models for the visual scene, we show that the emergence of this pattern is triggered by the non-Gaussian, higher-order local structure of the inputs, which has long been recognised as the hallmark of natural images. We provide an analytical and numerical characterisation of the pattern-formation mechanism responsible for this phenomenon in a simple model, which results in an unexpected link between receptive field formation and the tensor decomposition of higher-order input correlations. These results provide a new perspective on the development of low-level feature detectors in various sensory modalities, and pave the way for studying the impact of higher-order statistics on learning in neural networks.
Optimum parameter estimation methods require knowledge of a parametric probability density that statistically describes the available observations. In this work we examine Bayesian and non-Bayesian parameter estimation problems under a data-driven formulation where the necessary parametric probability density is replaced by available data. We present various data-driven versions that either result in neural network approximations of the optimum estimators or in well defined optimization problems that can be solved numerically. In particular, for the data-driven equivalent of non-Bayesian estimation we end up with optimization problems similar to the ones encountered for the design of generative networks.
Focus of this work is to recognize standards and further features directly from 3D CAD models. For this reason, a neural network was trained to recognize nine classes of machine elements. After the system identified a part as a standard, like a hexagon head screw after the DIN EN ISO 8676, it accesses the geometrical information of the CAD system via the Application Programming Interface (API). In the API, the system searches for necessary information to describe the part appropriately. Based on this information standardized parts can be recognized in detail and supplemented with further information.
For stochastic models with intractable likelihood functions, approximate Bayesian computation offers a way of approximating the true posterior through repeated comparisons of observations with simulated model outputs in terms of a small set of summary statistics. These statistics need to retain the information that is relevant for constraining the parameters but cancel out the noise. They can thus be seen as thermodynamic state variables, for general stochastic models. For many scientific applications, we need strictly more summary statistics than model parameters to reach a satisfactory approximation of the posterior. Therefore, we propose to use the inner dimension of deep neural network based Autoencoders as summary statistics. To create an incentive for the encoder to encode all the parameter-related information but not the noise, we give the decoder access to explicit or implicit information on the noise that has been used to generate the training data. We validate the approach empirically on two types of stochastic models.
Instead of using current deep-learning segmentation models (like the UNet and variants), we approach the segmentation problem using trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifiers, which automatically extract important features from images for classification. Those extracted features can be visualized and formed into heatmaps using Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM). This study tested whether the heatmaps could be used to segment the classified targets. We also proposed an evaluation method for the heatmaps; that is, to re-train the CNN classifier using images filtered by heatmaps and examine its performance. We used the mean-Dice coefficient to evaluate segmentation results. Results from our experiments show that heatmaps can locate and segment partial tumor areas. But use of only the heatmaps from CNN classifiers may not be an optimal approach for segmentation. We have verified that the predictions of CNN classifiers mainly depend on tumor areas, and dark regions in Grad-CAM's heatmaps also contribute to classification.
As soon as abstract mathematical computations were adapted to computation on digital computers, the problem of efficient representation, manipulation, and communication of the numerical values in those computations arose. Strongly related to the problem of numerical representation is the problem of quantization: in what manner should a set of continuous real-valued numbers be distributed over a fixed discrete set of numbers to minimize the number of bits required and also to maximize the accuracy of the attendant computations? This perennial problem of quantization is particularly relevant whenever memory and/or computational resources are severely restricted, and it has come to the forefront in recent years due to the remarkable performance of Neural Network models in computer vision, natural language processing, and related areas. Moving from floating-point representations to low-precision fixed integer values represented in four bits or less holds the potential to reduce the memory footprint and latency by a factor of 16x; and, in fact, reductions of 4x to 8x are often realized in practice in these applications. Thus, it is not surprising that quantization has emerged recently as an important and very active sub-area of research in the efficient implementation of computations associated with Neural Networks. In this article, we survey approaches to the problem of quantizing the numerical values in deep Neural Network computations, covering the advantages/disadvantages of current methods. With this survey and its organization, we hope to have presented a useful snapshot of the current research in quantization for Neural Networks and to have given an intelligent organization to ease the evaluation of future research in this area.
For neural networks (NNs) with rectified linear unit (ReLU) or binary activation functions, we show that their training can be accomplished in a reduced parameter space. Specifically, the weights in each neuron can be trained on the unit sphere, as opposed to the entire space, and the threshold can be trained in a bounded interval, as opposed to the real line. We show that the NNs in the reduced parameter space are mathematically equivalent to the standard NNs with parameters in the whole space. The reduced parameter space shall facilitate the optimization procedure for the network training, as the search space becomes (much) smaller. We demonstrate the improved training performance using numerical examples.
This paper addresses the problem of formally verifying desirable properties of neural networks, i.e., obtaining provable guarantees that neural networks satisfy specifications relating their inputs and outputs (robustness to bounded norm adversarial perturbations, for example). Most previous work on this topic was limited in its applicability by the size of the network, network architecture and the complexity of properties to be verified. In contrast, our framework applies to a general class of activation functions and specifications on neural network inputs and outputs. We formulate verification as an optimization problem (seeking to find the largest violation of the specification) and solve a Lagrangian relaxation of the optimization problem to obtain an upper bound on the worst case violation of the specification being verified. Our approach is anytime i.e. it can be stopped at any time and a valid bound on the maximum violation can be obtained. We develop specialized verification algorithms with provable tightness guarantees under special assumptions and demonstrate the practical significance of our general verification approach on a variety of verification tasks.
In the past decade, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in various Artificial Intelligence tasks. To accelerate the experimentation and development of CNNs, several software frameworks have been released, primarily targeting power-hungry CPUs and GPUs. In this context, reconfigurable hardware in the form of FPGAs constitutes a potential alternative platform that can be integrated in the existing deep learning ecosystem to provide a tunable balance between performance, power consumption and programmability. In this paper, a survey of the existing CNN-to-FPGA toolflows is presented, comprising a comparative study of their key characteristics which include the supported applications, architectural choices, design space exploration methods and achieved performance. Moreover, major challenges and objectives introduced by the latest trends in CNN algorithmic research are identified and presented. Finally, a uniform evaluation methodology is proposed, aiming at the comprehensive, complete and in-depth evaluation of CNN-to-FPGA toolflows.