Meta-Learning with Heterogeneous Tasks

Meta-learning is a general approach to equip machine learning models with the ability to handle few-shot scenarios when dealing with many tasks. Most existing meta-learning methods work based on the assumption that all tasks are of equal importance. However, real-world applications often present heterogeneous tasks characterized by varying difficulty levels, noise in training samples, or being distinctively different from most other tasks. In this paper, we introduce a novel meta-learning method designed to effectively manage such heterogeneous tasks by employing rank-based task-level learning objectives, Heterogeneous Tasks Robust Meta-learning (HeTRoM). HeTRoM is proficient in handling heterogeneous tasks, and it prevents easy tasks from overwhelming the meta-learner. The approach allows for an efficient iterative optimization algorithm based on bi-level optimization, which is then improved by integrating statistical guidance. Our experimental results demonstrate that our method provides flexibility, enabling users to adapt to diverse task settings and enhancing the meta-learner's overall performance.

An Explainable Non-local Network for COVID-19 Diagnosis

The CNN has achieved excellent results in the automatic classification of medical images. In this study, we propose a novel deep residual 3D attention non-local network (NL-RAN) to classify CT images included COVID-19, common pneumonia, and normal to perform rapid and explainable COVID-19 diagnosis. We built a deep residual 3D attention non-local network that could achieve end-to-end training. The network is embedded with a nonlocal module to capture global information, while a 3D attention module is embedded to focus on the details of the lesion so that it can directly analyze the 3D lung CT and output the classification results. The output of the attention module can be used as a heat map to increase the interpretability of the model. 4079 3D CT scans were included in this study. Each scan had a unique label (novel coronavirus pneumonia, common pneumonia, and normal). The CT scans cohort was randomly split into a training set of 3263 scans, a validation set of 408 scans, and a testing set of 408 scans. And compare with existing mainstream classification methods, such as CovNet, CBAM, ResNet, etc. Simultaneously compare the visualization results with visualization methods such as CAM. Model performance was evaluated using the Area Under the ROC Curve(AUC), precision, and F1-score. The NL-RAN achieved the AUC of 0.9903, the precision of 0.9473, and the F1-score of 0.9462, surpass all the classification methods compared. The heat map output by the attention module is also clearer than the heat map output by CAM. Our experimental results indicate that our proposed method performs significantly better than existing methods. In addition, the first attention module outputs a heat map containing detailed outline information to increase the interpretability of the model. Our experiments indicate that the inference of our model is fast. It can provide real-time assistance with diagnosis.

U-MedSAM: Uncertainty-aware MedSAM for Medical Image Segmentation

Medical Image Foundation Models have proven to be powerful tools for mask prediction across various datasets. However, accurately assessing the uncertainty of their predictions remains a significant challenge. To address this, we propose a new model, U-MedSAM, which integrates the MedSAM model with an uncertainty-aware loss function and the Sharpness-Aware Minimization (SharpMin) optimizer. The uncertainty-aware loss function automatically combines region-based, distribution-based, and pixel-based loss designs to enhance segmentation accuracy and robustness. SharpMin improves generalization by finding flat minima in the loss landscape, thereby reducing overfitting. Our method was evaluated in the CVPR24 MedSAM on Laptop challenge, where U-MedSAM demonstrated promising performance.

Enhancing Vehicle Re-identification and Matching for Weaving Analysis

Vehicle weaving on highways contributes to traffic congestion, raises safety issues, and underscores the need for sophisticated traffic management systems. Current tools are inadequate in offering precise and comprehensive data on lane-specific weaving patterns. This paper introduces an innovative method for collecting non-overlapping video data in weaving zones, enabling the generation of quantitative insights into lane-specific weaving behaviors. Our experimental results confirm the efficacy of this approach, delivering critical data that can assist transportation authorities in enhancing traffic control and roadway infrastructure.

Robustly Optimized Deep Feature Decoupling Network for Fatty Liver Diseases Detection

Current medical image classification efforts mainly aim for higher average performance, often neglecting the balance between different classes. This can lead to significant differences in recognition accuracy between classes and obvious recognition weaknesses. Without the support of massive data, deep learning faces challenges in fine-grained classification of fatty liver. In this paper, we propose an innovative deep learning framework that combines feature decoupling and adaptive adversarial training. Firstly, we employ two iteratively compressed decouplers to supervised decouple common features and specific features related to fatty liver in abdominal ultrasound images. Subsequently, the decoupled features are concatenated with the original image after transforming the color space and are fed into the classifier. During adversarial training, we adaptively adjust the perturbation and balance the adversarial strength by the accuracy of each class. The model will eliminate recognition weaknesses by correctly classifying adversarial samples, thus improving recognition robustness. Finally, the accuracy of our method improved by 4.16%, achieving 82.95%. As demonstrated by extensive experiments, our method is a generalized learning framework that can be directly used to eliminate the recognition weaknesses of any classifier while improving its average performance. Code is available at https://github.com/HP-ML/MICCAI2024.

AI-Face: A Million-Scale Demographically Annotated AI-Generated Face Dataset and Fairness Benchmark

AI-generated faces have enriched human life, such as entertainment, education, and art. However, they also pose misuse risks. Therefore, detecting AI-generated faces becomes crucial, yet current detectors show biased performance across different demographic groups. Mitigating biases can be done by designing algorithmic fairness methods, which usually require demographically annotated face datasets for model training. However, no existing dataset comprehensively encompasses both demographic attributes and diverse generative methods, which hinders the development of fair detectors for AI-generated faces. In this work, we introduce the AI-Face dataset, the first million-scale demographically annotated AI-generated face image dataset, including real faces, faces from deepfake videos, and faces generated by Generative Adversarial Networks and Diffusion Models. Based on this dataset, we conduct the first comprehensive fairness benchmark to assess various AI face detectors and provide valuable insights and findings to promote the future fair design of AI face detectors. Our AI-Face dataset and benchmark code are publicly available at https://github.com/Purdue-M2/AI-Face-FairnessBench.

UU-Mamba: Uncertainty-aware U-Mamba for Cardiac Image Segmentation

Biomedical image segmentation is critical for accurate identification and analysis of anatomical structures in medical imaging, particularly in cardiac MRI. However, manual segmentation is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to variability, necessitating automated methods. Current machine learning approaches, while promising, face challenges such as overfitting, high computational demands, and the need for extensive annotated data. To address these issues, we propose a UU-Mamba model that integrates the U-Mamba model with the Sharpness-Aware Minimization optimizer and an uncertainty-aware loss function. SAM enhances generalization by finding flat minima in the loss landscape, mitigating overfitting. The uncertainty-aware loss combines region-based, distribution-based, and pixel-based losses, improving segmentation accuracy and robustness. Our method, evaluated on the ACDC cardiac dataset, outperforms state-of-the-art models (TransUNet, Swin-Unet, nnUNet, nnFormer), achieving superior Dice Similarity Coefficient and Mean Squared Error results, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach in cardiac MRI segmentation.

Robust CLIP-Based Detector for Exposing Diffusion Model-Generated Images

Diffusion models (DMs) have revolutionized image generation, producing high-quality images with applications spanning various fields. However, their ability to create hyper-realistic images poses significant challenges in distinguishing between real and synthetic content, raising concerns about digital authenticity and potential misuse in creating deepfakes. This work introduces a robust detection framework that integrates image and text features extracted by CLIP model with a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) classifier. We propose a novel loss that can improve the detector's robustness and handle imbalanced datasets. Additionally, we flatten the loss landscape during the model training to improve the detector's generalization capabilities. The effectiveness of our method, which outperforms traditional detection techniques, is demonstrated through extensive experiments, underscoring its potential to set a new state-of-the-art approach in DM-generated image detection. The code is available at https://github.com/Purdue-M2/Robust_DM_Generated_Image_Detection.

Benchmarking the Robustness of UAV Tracking Against Common Corruptions

The robustness of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) tracking is crucial in many tasks like surveillance and robotics. Despite its importance, little attention is paid to the performance of UAV trackers under common corruptions due to lack of a dedicated platform. Addressing this, we propose UAV-C, a large-scale benchmark for assessing robustness of UAV trackers under common corruptions. Specifically, UAV-C is built upon two popular UAV datasets by introducing 18 common corruptions from 4 representative categories including adversarial, sensor, blur, and composite corruptions in different levels. Finally, UAV-C contains more than 10K sequences. To understand the robustness of existing UAV trackers against corruptions, we extensively evaluate 12 representative algorithms on UAV-C. Our study reveals several key findings: 1) Current trackers are vulnerable to corruptions, indicating more attention needed in enhancing the robustness of UAV trackers; 2) When accompanying together, composite corruptions result in more severe degradation to trackers; and 3) While each tracker has its unique performance profile, some trackers may be more sensitive to specific corruptions. By releasing UAV-C, we hope it, along with comprehensive analysis, serves as a valuable resource for advancing the robustness of UAV tracking against corruption. Our UAV-C will be available at https://github.com/Xiaoqiong-Liu/UAV-C.

Robust COVID-19 Detection in CT Images with CLIP

In the realm of medical imaging, particularly for COVID-19 detection, deep learning models face substantial challenges such as the necessity for extensive computational resources, the paucity of well-annotated datasets, and a significant amount of unlabeled data. In this work, we introduce the first lightweight detector designed to overcome these obstacles, leveraging a frozen CLIP image encoder and a trainable multilayer perception (MLP). Enhanced with Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) for robustness and a loss landscape flattening strategy for improved generalization, our model is tailored for high efficacy in COVID-19 detection. Furthermore, we integrate a teacher-student framework to capitalize on the vast amounts of unlabeled data, enabling our model to achieve superior performance despite the inherent data limitations. Experimental results on the COV19-CT-DB dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, surpassing baseline by up to 10.6% in `macro' F1 score in supervised learning. The code is available at https://github.com/Purdue-M2/COVID-19_Detection_M2_PURDUE.