Topology-aware Mamba for Crack Segmentation in Structures

CrackMamba, a Mamba-based model, is designed for efficient and accurate crack segmentation for monitoring the structural health of infrastructure. Traditional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models struggle with limited receptive fields, and while Vision Transformers (ViT) improve segmentation accuracy, they are computationally intensive. CrackMamba addresses these challenges by utilizing the VMambaV2 with pre-trained ImageNet-1k weights as the encoder and a newly designed decoder for better performance. To handle the random and complex nature of crack development, a Snake Scan module is proposed to reshape crack feature sequences, enhancing feature extraction. Additionally, the three-branch Snake Conv VSS (SCVSS) block is proposed to target cracks more effectively. Experiments show that CrackMamba achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance on the CrackSeg9k and SewerCrack datasets, and demonstrates competitive performance on the retinal vessel segmentation dataset CHASE\underline{~}DB1, highlighting its generalization capability. The code is publicly available at: {https://github.com/shengyu27/CrackMamba.}

MSGField: A Unified Scene Representation Integrating Motion, Semantics, and Geometry for Robotic Manipulation

Combining accurate geometry with rich semantics has been proven to be highly effective for language-guided robotic manipulation. Existing methods for dynamic scenes either fail to update in real-time or rely on additional depth sensors for simple scene editing, limiting their applicability in real-world. In this paper, we introduce MSGField, a representation that uses a collection of 2D Gaussians for high-quality reconstruction, further enhanced with attributes to encode semantic and motion information. Specially, we represent the motion field compactly by decomposing each primitive's motion into a combination of a limited set of motion bases. Leveraging the differentiable real-time rendering of Gaussian splatting, we can quickly optimize object motion, even for complex non-rigid motions, with image supervision from only two camera views. Additionally, we designed a pipeline that utilizes object priors to efficiently obtain well-defined semantics. In our challenging dataset, which includes flexible and extremely small objects, our method achieve a success rate of 79.2% in static and 63.3% in dynamic environments for language-guided manipulation. For specified object grasping, we achieve a success rate of 90%, on par with point cloud-based methods. Code and dataset will be released at:https://shengyu724.github.io/MSGField.github.io.

Unveiling Factual Recall Behaviors of Large Language Models through Knowledge Neurons

In this paper, we investigate whether Large Language Models (LLMs) actively recall or retrieve their internal repositories of factual knowledge when faced with reasoning tasks. Through an analysis of LLMs' internal factual recall at each reasoning step via Knowledge Neurons, we reveal that LLMs fail to harness the critical factual associations under certain circumstances. Instead, they tend to opt for alternative, shortcut-like pathways to answer reasoning questions. By manually manipulating the recall process of parametric knowledge in LLMs, we demonstrate that enhancing this recall process directly improves reasoning performance whereas suppressing it leads to notable degradation. Furthermore, we assess the effect of Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting, a powerful technique for addressing complex reasoning tasks. Our findings indicate that CoT can intensify the recall of factual knowledge by encouraging LLMs to engage in orderly and reliable reasoning. Furthermore, we explored how contextual conflicts affect the retrieval of facts during the reasoning process to gain a comprehensive understanding of the factual recall behaviors of LLMs. Code and data will be available soon.

Multi-label Sewer Pipe Defect Recognition with Mask Attention Feature Enhancement and Label Correlation Learning

The coexistence of multiple defect categories as well as the substantial class imbalance problem significantly impair the detection of sewer pipeline defects. To solve this problem, a multi-label pipe defect recognition method is proposed based on mask attention guided feature enhancement and label correlation learning. The proposed method can achieve current approximate state-of-the-art classification performance using just 1/16 of the Sewer-ML training dataset and exceeds the current best method by 11.87\% in terms of F2 metric on the full dataset, while also proving the superiority of the model. The major contribution of this study is the development of a more efficient model for identifying and locating multiple defects in sewer pipe images for a more accurate sewer pipeline condition assessment. Moreover, by employing class activation maps, our method can accurately pinpoint multiple defect categories in the image which demonstrates a strong model interpretability. Our code is available at \href{https://github.com/shengyu27/MA-Q2L}{\textcolor{black}{https://github.com/shengyu27/MA-Q2L.}

Rendering-Enhanced Automatic Image-to-Point Cloud Registration for Roadside Scenes

Prior point cloud provides 3D environmental context, which enhances the capabilities of monocular camera in downstream vision tasks, such as 3D object detection, via data fusion. However, the absence of accurate and automated registration methods for estimating camera extrinsic parameters in roadside scene point clouds notably constrains the potential applications of roadside cameras. This paper proposes a novel approach for the automatic registration between prior point clouds and images from roadside scenes. The main idea involves rendering photorealistic grayscale views taken at specific perspectives from the prior point cloud with the help of their features like RGB or intensity values. These generated views can reduce the modality differences between images and prior point clouds, thereby improve the robustness and accuracy of the registration results. Particularly, we specify an efficient algorithm, named neighbor rendering, for the rendering process. Then we introduce a method for automatically estimating the initial guess using only rough guesses of camera's position. At last, we propose a procedure for iteratively refining the extrinsic parameters by minimizing the reprojection error for line features extracted from both generated and camera images using Segment Anything Model (SAM). We assess our method using a self-collected dataset, comprising eight cameras strategically positioned throughout the university campus. Experiments demonstrate our method's capability to automatically align prior point cloud with roadside camera image, achieving a rotation accuracy of 0.202 degrees and a translation precision of 0.079m. Furthermore, we validate our approach's effectiveness in visual applications by substantially improving monocular 3D object detection performance.

MM-Gaussian: 3D Gaussian-based Multi-modal Fusion for Localization and Reconstruction in Unbounded Scenes

Localization and mapping are critical tasks for various applications such as autonomous vehicles and robotics. The challenges posed by outdoor environments present particular complexities due to their unbounded characteristics. In this work, we present MM-Gaussian, a LiDAR-camera multi-modal fusion system for localization and mapping in unbounded scenes. Our approach is inspired by the recently developed 3D Gaussians, which demonstrate remarkable capabilities in achieving high rendering quality and fast rendering speed. Specifically, our system fully utilizes the geometric structure information provided by solid-state LiDAR to address the problem of inaccurate depth encountered when relying solely on visual solutions in unbounded, outdoor scenarios. Additionally, we utilize 3D Gaussian point clouds, with the assistance of pixel-level gradient descent, to fully exploit the color information in photos, thereby achieving realistic rendering effects. To further bolster the robustness of our system, we designed a relocalization module, which assists in returning to the correct trajectory in the event of a localization failure. Experiments conducted in multiple scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

EdgeCalib: Multi-Frame Weighted Edge Features for Automatic Targetless LiDAR-Camera Calibration

In multimodal perception systems, achieving precise extrinsic calibration between LiDAR and camera is of critical importance. Previous calibration methods often required specific targets or manual adjustments, making them both labor-intensive and costly. Online calibration methods based on features have been proposed, but these methods encounter challenges such as imprecise feature extraction, unreliable cross-modality associations, and high scene-specific requirements. To address this, we introduce an edge-based approach for automatic online calibration of LiDAR and cameras in real-world scenarios. The edge features, which are prevalent in various environments, are aligned in both images and point clouds to determine the extrinsic parameters. Specifically, stable and robust image edge features are extracted using a SAM-based method and the edge features extracted from the point cloud are weighted through a multi-frame weighting strategy for feature filtering. Finally, accurate extrinsic parameters are optimized based on edge correspondence constraints. We conducted evaluations on both the KITTI dataset and our dataset. The results show a state-of-the-art rotation accuracy of 0.086{\deg} and a translation accuracy of 0.977 cm, outperforming existing edge-based calibration methods in both precision and robustness.

Judicial Intelligent Assistant System: Extracting Events from Divorce Cases to Detect Disputes for the Judge

In formal procedure of civil cases, the textual materials provided by different parties describe the development process of the cases. It is a difficult but necessary task to extract the key information for the cases from these textual materials and to clarify the dispute focus of related parties. Currently, officers read the materials manually and use methods, such as keyword searching and regular matching, to get the target information. These approaches are time-consuming and heavily depending on prior knowledge and carefulness of the officers. To assist the officers to enhance working efficiency and accuracy, we propose an approach to detect disputes from divorce cases based on a two-round-labeling event extracting technique in this paper. We implement the Judicial Intelligent Assistant (JIA) system according to the proposed approach to 1) automatically extract focus events from divorce case materials, 2) align events by identifying co-reference among them, and 3) detect conflicts among events brought by the plaintiff and the defendant. With the JIA system, it is convenient for judges to determine the disputed issues. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach and system can obtain the focus of cases and detect conflicts more effectively and efficiently comparing with existing method.

MRI-based Multi-task Decoupling Learning for Alzheimer's Disease Detection and MMSE Score Prediction: A Multi-site Validation

Accurately detecting Alzheimer's disease (AD) and predicting mini-mental state examination (MMSE) score are important tasks in elderly health by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Most of the previous methods on these two tasks are based on single-task learning and rarely consider the correlation between them. Since the MMSE score, which is an important basis for AD diagnosis, can also reflect the progress of cognitive impairment, some studies have begun to apply multi-task learning methods to these two tasks. However, how to exploit feature correlation remains a challenging problem for these methods. To comprehensively address this challenge, we propose a MRI-based multi-task decoupled learning method for AD detection and MMSE score prediction. First, a multi-task learning network is proposed to implement AD detection and MMSE score prediction, which exploits feature correlation by adding three multi-task interaction layers between the backbones of the two tasks. Each multi-task interaction layer contains two feature decoupling modules and one feature interaction module. Furthermore, to enhance the generalization between tasks of the features selected by the feature decoupling module, we propose the feature consistency loss constrained feature decoupling module. Finally, in order to exploit the specific distribution information of MMSE score in different groups, a distribution loss is proposed to further enhance the model performance. We evaluate our proposed method on multi-site datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed multi-task decoupled representation learning method achieves good performance, outperforming single-task learning and other existing state-of-the-art methods.