Many contact-sensor-based methods for structural damage detection have been developed. However, these methods have difficulty compensating for environmental effects, such as variation or changes in ...temperature and humidity, which may lead to false alarms. In order to partially overcome these disadvantages, vision-based approaches have been developed to detect corrosions, cracks, delamination, and voids. However, there are few such approaches for loosened bolts. Therefore, we propose a novel vision-based detection method. Target images of loosened bolts were taken by a smartphone camera. From the images, simple damage-sensitive features, such as the horizontal and vertical lengths of the bolt head, were calculated automatically using the Hough transform and other image processing techniques. A linear support vector machine was trained with the aforementioned features, thereby building a robust classifier capable of automatically differentiating tight bolts from loose bolts. Leave-one-out cross-validation was adapted to analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results highlight the excellent performance of the proposed approach to detecting loosened bolts, and that it can operate in quasi-real-time.
•An automated computer-vision method for detecting loosened bolts is proposed.•Advanced image processing, feature extraction techniques, and LSVM are integrated.•The proposed method shows high computational efficiency with simple features.•The method shows robust performance within the limited range of angle and distance.
Common representations of functional networks of resting state fMRI time series, including covariance, precision, and cross-correlation matrices, belong to the family of symmetric positive definite ...(SPD) matrices forming a special mathematical structure called Riemannian manifold. Due to its geometric properties, the analysis and operation of functional connectivity matrices may well be performed on the Riemannian manifold of the SPD space. Analysis of functional networks on the SPD space takes account of all the pairwise interactions (edges) as a whole, which differs from the conventional rationale of considering edges as independent from each other. Despite its geometric characteristics, only a few studies have been conducted for functional network analysis on the SPD manifold and inference methods specialized for connectivity analysis on the SPD manifold are rarely found. The current study aims to show the significance of connectivity analysis on the SPD space and introduce inference algorithms on the SPD manifold, such as regression analysis of functional networks in association with behaviors, principal geodesic analysis, clustering, state transition analysis of dynamic functional networks and statistical tests for network equality on the SPD manifold. We applied the proposed methods to both simulated data and experimental resting state fMRI data from the human connectome project and argue the importance of analyzing functional networks under the SPD geometry. All the algorithms for numerical operations and inferences on the SPD manifold are implemented as a MATLAB library, called SPDtoolbox, for public use to expediate functional network analysis on the right geometry.
The correlation matrix is a typical representation of node interactions in functional brain network analysis. The analysis of the correlation matrix to characterize brain networks observed in several ...neuroimaging modalities has been conducted predominantly in the Euclidean space by assuming that pairwise interactions are mutually independent. One way to take account of all interactions in the network as a whole is to analyze the correlation matrix under some geometric structure. Recent studies have focused on the space of correlation matrices as a strict subset of symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices, which form a unique mathematical structure known as the Riemannian manifold. However, mathematical operations of the correlation matrix under the SPD geometry may not necessarily be coherent (i.e., the structure of the correlation matrix may not be preserved), necessitating a post-hoc normalization. The contribution of the current paper is twofold: (1) to devise a set of inferential methods on the correlation manifold and (2) to demonstrate its applicability in functional network analysis. We present several algorithms on the correlation manifold, including measures of central tendency, cluster analysis, hypothesis testing, and low-dimensional embedding. Simulation and real data analysis support the application of the proposed framework for brain network analysis.
Due to commonalities in pathophysiology, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) represents a uniquely accessible model to investigate therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, leading us to examine ...whether pathways of disease progression are shared across neurodegenerative conditions. Here we use single-nucleus RNA sequencing to profile lesions from 11 postmortem human retinas with age-related macular degeneration and 6 control retinas with no history of retinal disease. We create a machine-learning pipeline based on recent advances in data geometry and topology and identify activated glial populations enriched in the early phase of disease. Examining single-cell data from Alzheimer's disease and progressive multiple sclerosis with our pipeline, we find a similar glial activation profile enriched in the early phase of these neurodegenerative diseases. In late-stage age-related macular degeneration, we identify a microglia-to-astrocyte signaling axis mediated by interleukin-1β which drives angiogenesis characteristic of disease pathogenesis. We validated this mechanism using in vitro and in vivo assays in mouse, identifying a possible new therapeutic target for AMD and possibly other neurodegenerative conditions. Thus, due to shared glial states, the retina provides a potential system for investigating therapeutic approaches in neurodegenerative diseases.
In directional statistics, the von Mises-Fisher (vMF) distribution is one of the most basic and popular probability distributions for data on the unit hypersphere. Recently, the spherical normal (SN) ...distribution was proposed as an intrinsic counterpart to the vMF distribution by replacing the standard Euclidean norm with the great-circle distance, which is length of the shortest path joining two points on the unit sphere. Focusing on an isotropic version of SN distribution, it is shown that maximum likelihood estimators uniquely exist under mild support conditions. Since no analytic formula are available for the estimation, efficient numerical routines are proposed for parameter estimation. The estimation is considered in a general setting where non-negative weights are assigned to observations. This leads to a more interesting contribution for model-based clustering on the unit hypersphere by finite mixture model with SN distributions. Efficiency of optimization-based estimation procedures and effectiveness of SN mixture model are validated using simulated and real data examples.
•Theoretical guarantee for maximum likelihood estimates of the spherical normal distribution is shown.•Efficient optimization routines are presented for parameter estimation with weighted observations.•Numerical routines are adopted to fit a finite mixture model for model-based clustering.
Discovering patterns of the complex high-dimensional data is one of the fundamental pillars of modern data science. Dimension reduction and intrinsic dimension estimation are two thematic programs ...that facilitate geometric characterization of the data. We present Rdimtools, an R package that supports 143 dimension reduction and manifold learning methods and 17 dimension estimation algorithms whose unprecedented extent makes multifaceted scrutiny of the data in one place easier. Rdimtools is distributed under the MIT license and is accessible from CRAN, GitHub, and its package website, all of which deliver instruction for installation, self-contained examples, and API documentation.
•Today’s data analysis involves high-dimensional observations.•It is common to assume that there is a low-dimensional structure underneath the observed data.•Dimension reduction and intrinsic dimension estimation are two central themes in studying latent structure of high-dimensional data.•We propose Rdimtools, an R package that implements an unprecedented number of algorithms for the aforementioned tasks.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are transformer‐based neural networks with billions of parameters trained on very large text corpora from diverse sources. LLMs have the potential to improve healthcare ...due to their capability to parse complex concepts and generate context‐based responses. The interest in LLMs has not spared digestive disease academics, who have mainly investigated foundational LLM accuracy, which ranges from 25% to 90% and is influenced by the lack of standardized rules to report methodologies and results for LLM‐oriented research. In addition, a critical issue is the absence of a universally accepted definition of accuracy, varying from binary to scalar interpretations, often tied to grader expertise without reference to clinical guidelines. We address strategies and challenges to increase accuracy. In particular, LLMs can be infused with domain knowledge using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) or Supervised Fine‐Tuning (SFT) with reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). RAG faces challenges with in‐context window limits and accurate information retrieval from the provided context. SFT, a deeper adaptation method, is computationally demanding and requires specialized knowledge. LLMs may increase patient quality of care across the field of digestive diseases, where physicians are often engaged in screening, treatment and surveillance for a broad range of pathologies for which in‐context learning or SFT with RLHF could improve clinical decision‐making and patient outcomes. However, despite their potential, the safe deployment of LLMs in healthcare still needs to overcome hurdles in accuracy, suggesting a need for strategies that integrate human feedback with advanced model training.