A Modulation Layer to Increase Neural Network Robustness Against Data Quality Issues

Data quality is a common problem in machine learning, especially in high-stakes settings such as healthcare. Missing data affects accuracy, calibration, and feature attribution in complex patterns. Developers often train models on carefully curated datasets to minimize missing data bias; however, this reduces the usability of such models in production environments, such as real-time healthcare records. Making machine learning models robust to missing data is therefore crucial for practical application. While some classifiers naturally handle missing data, others, such as deep neural networks, are not designed for unknown values. We propose a novel neural network modification to mitigate the impacts of missing data. The approach is inspired by neuromodulation that is performed by biological neural networks. Our proposal replaces the fixed weights of a fully-connected layer with a function of an additional input (reliability score) at each input, mimicking the ability of cortex to up- and down-weight inputs based on the presence of other data. The modulation function is jointly learned with the main task using a multi-layer perceptron. We tested our modulating fully connected layer on multiple classification, regression, and imputation problems, and it either improved performance or generated comparable performance to conventional neural network architectures concatenating reliability to the inputs. Models with modulating layers were more robust against degradation of data quality by introducing additional missingness at evaluation time. These results suggest that explicitly accounting for reduced information quality with a modulating fully connected layer can enable the deployment of artificial intelligence systems in real-time settings.

(Un)fairness in Post-operative Complication Prediction Models

With the current ongoing debate about fairness, explainability and transparency of machine learning models, their application in high-impact clinical decision-making systems must be scrutinized. We consider a real-life example of risk estimation before surgery and investigate the potential for bias or unfairness of a variety of algorithms. Our approach creates transparent documentation of potential bias so that the users can apply the model carefully. We augment a model-card like analysis using propensity scores with a decision-tree based guide for clinicians that would identify predictable shortcomings of the model. In addition to functioning as a guide for users, we propose that it can guide the algorithm development and informatics team to focus on data sources and structures that can address these shortcomings.

A Comparison of Data Augmentation Techniques in Training Deep Neural Networks for Satellite Image Classification

Satellite imagery allows a plethora of applications ranging from weather forecasting to land surveying. The rapid development of computer vision systems could open new horizons to the utilization of satellite data due to the abundance of large volumes of data. However, current state-of-the-art computer vision systems mainly cater to applications that mainly involve natural images. While useful, those images exhibit a different distribution from satellite images in addition to having more spectral channels. This allows the use of pretrained deep learning models only in a subset of spectral channels that are equivalent to natural images thus discarding valuable information from other spectral channels. This calls for research effort to optimize deep learning models for satellite imagery to enable the assessment of their utility in the domain of remote sensing. This study focuses on the topic of image augmentation in training of deep neural network classifiers. I tested different techniques for image augmentation to train a standard deep neural network on satellite images from EuroSAT. Results show that while some image augmentation techniques commonly used in natural image training can readily be transferred to satellite images, some others could actually lead to a decrease in performance. Additionally, some novel image augmentation techniques that take into account the nature of satellite images could be useful to incorporate in training.