Transfer Learning for Keypoint Detection in Low-Resolution Thermal TUG Test Images

This study presents a novel approach to human keypoint detection in low-resolution thermal images using transfer learning techniques. We introduce the first application of the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test in thermal image computer vision, establishing a new paradigm for mobility assessment. Our method leverages a MobileNetV3-Small encoder and a ViTPose decoder, trained using a composite loss function that balances latent representation alignment and heatmap accuracy. The model was evaluated using the Object Keypoint Similarity (OKS) metric from the COCO Keypoint Detection Challenge. The proposed model achieves better performance with AP, AP50, and AP75 scores of 0.861, 0.942, and 0.887 respectively, outperforming traditional supervised learning approaches like Mask R-CNN and ViTPose-Base. Moreover, our model demonstrates superior computational efficiency in terms of parameter count and FLOPS. This research lays a solid foundation for future clinical applications of thermal imaging in mobility assessment and rehabilitation monitoring.

CodecFake-Omni: A Large-Scale Codec-based Deepfake Speech Dataset

With the rapid advancement of codec-based speech generation (CoSG) systems, creating fake speech that mimics an individual's identity and spreads misinformation has become remarkably easy. Addressing the risks posed by such deepfake speech has attracted significant attention. However, most existing studies focus on detecting fake data generated by traditional speech generation models. Research on detecting fake speech generated by CoSG systems remains limited and largely unexplored. In this paper, we introduce CodecFake-Omni, a large-scale dataset specifically designed to advance the study of neural codec-based deepfake speech (CodecFake) detection and promote progress within the anti-spoofing community. To the best of our knowledge, CodecFake-Omni is the largest dataset of its kind till writing this paper, encompassing the most diverse range of codec architectures. The training set is generated through re-synthesis using nearly all publicly available open-source 31 neural audio codec models across 21 different codec families (one codec family with different configurations will result in multiple different codec models). The evaluation set includes web-sourced data collected from websites generated by 17 advanced CoSG models with eight codec families. Using this large-scale dataset, we reaffirm our previous findings that anti-spoofing models trained on traditional spoofing datasets generated by vocoders struggle to detect synthesized speech from current CoSG systems. Additionally, we propose a comprehensive neural audio codec taxonomy, categorizing neural audio codecs by their root components: vector quantizer, auxiliary objectives, and decoder types, with detailed explanations and representative examples for each. Using this comprehensive taxonomy, we conduct stratified analysis to provide valuable insights for future CodecFake detection research.

Detecting the Undetectable: Assessing the Efficacy of Current Spoof Detection Methods Against Seamless Speech Edits

Neural speech editing advancements have raised concerns about their misuse in spoofing attacks. Traditional partially edited speech corpora primarily focus on cut-and-paste edits, which, while maintaining speaker consistency, often introduce detectable discontinuities. Recent methods, like A\textsuperscript{3}T and Voicebox, improve transitions by leveraging contextual information. To foster spoofing detection research, we introduce the Speech INfilling Edit (SINE) dataset, created with Voicebox. We detailed the process of re-implementing Voicebox training and dataset creation. Subjective evaluations confirm that speech edited using this novel technique is more challenging to detect than conventional cut-and-paste methods. Despite human difficulty, experimental results demonstrate that self-supervised-based detectors can achieve remarkable performance in detection, localization, and generalization across different edit methods. The dataset and related models will be made publicly available.

MSECG: Incorporating Mamba for Robust and Efficient ECG Super-Resolution

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals play a crucial role in diagnosing cardiovascular diseases. To reduce power consumption in wearable or portable devices used for long-term ECG monitoring, super-resolution (SR) techniques have been developed, enabling these devices to collect and transmit signals at a lower sampling rate. In this study, we propose MSECG, a compact neural network model designed for ECG SR. MSECG combines the strength of the recurrent Mamba model with convolutional layers to capture both local and global dependencies in ECG waveforms, allowing for the effective reconstruction of high-resolution signals. We also assess the model's performance in real-world noisy conditions by utilizing ECG data from the PTB-XL database and noise data from the MIT-BIH Noise Stress Test Database. Experimental results show that MSECG outperforms two contemporary ECG SR models under both clean and noisy conditions while using fewer parameters, offering a more powerful and robust solution for long-term ECG monitoring applications.

MSEMG: Surface Electromyography Denoising with a Mamba-based Efficient Network

Surface electromyography (sEMG) recordings can be contaminated by electrocardiogram (ECG) signals when the monitored muscle is closed to the heart. Traditional signal-processing-based approaches, such as high-pass filtering and template subtraction, have been used to remove ECG interference but are often limited in their effectiveness. Recently, neural-network-based methods have shown greater promise for sEMG denoising, but they still struggle to balance both efficiency and effectiveness. In this study, we introduce MSEMG, a novel system that integrates the Mamba State Space Model with a convolutional neural network to serve as a lightweight sEMG denoising model. We evaluated MSEMG using sEMG data from the Non-Invasive Adaptive Prosthetics database and ECG signals from the MIT-BIH Normal Sinus Rhythm Database. The results show that MSEMG outperforms existing methods, generating higher-quality sEMG signals with fewer parameters. The source code for MSEMG is available at https://github.com/tonyliu0910/MSEMG.

How Good is ChatGPT at Audiovisual Deepfake Detection: A Comparative Study of ChatGPT, AI Models and Human Perception

Multimodal deepfakes involving audiovisual manipulations are a growing threat because they are difficult to detect with the naked eye or using unimodal deep learningbased forgery detection methods. Audiovisual forensic models, while more capable than unimodal models, require large training datasets and are computationally expensive for training and inference. Furthermore, these models lack interpretability and often do not generalize well to unseen manipulations. In this study, we examine the detection capabilities of a large language model (LLM) (i.e., ChatGPT) to identify and account for any possible visual and auditory artifacts and manipulations in audiovisual deepfake content. Extensive experiments are conducted on videos from a benchmark multimodal deepfake dataset to evaluate the detection performance of ChatGPT and compare it with the detection capabilities of state-of-the-art multimodal forensic models and humans. Experimental results demonstrate the importance of domain knowledge and prompt engineering for video forgery detection tasks using LLMs. Unlike approaches based on end-to-end learning, ChatGPT can account for spatial and spatiotemporal artifacts and inconsistencies that may exist within or across modalities. Additionally, we discuss the limitations of ChatGPT for multimedia forensic tasks.

Understanding Audiovisual Deepfake Detection: Techniques, Challenges, Human Factors and Perceptual Insights

Deep Learning has been successfully applied in diverse fields, and its impact on deepfake detection is no exception. Deepfakes are fake yet realistic synthetic content that can be used deceitfully for political impersonation, phishing, slandering, or spreading misinformation. Despite extensive research on unimodal deepfake detection, identifying complex deepfakes through joint analysis of audio and visual streams remains relatively unexplored. To fill this gap, this survey first provides an overview of audiovisual deepfake generation techniques, applications, and their consequences, and then provides a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art methods that combine audio and visual modalities to enhance detection accuracy, summarizing and critically analyzing their strengths and limitations. Furthermore, we discuss existing open source datasets for a deeper understanding, which can contribute to the research community and provide necessary information to beginners who want to analyze deep learning-based audiovisual methods for video forensics. By bridging the gap between unimodal and multimodal approaches, this paper aims to improve the effectiveness of deepfake detection strategies and guide future research in cybersecurity and media integrity.

RankUp: Boosting Semi-Supervised Regression with an Auxiliary Ranking Classifier

State-of-the-art (SOTA) semi-supervised learning techniques, such as FixMatch and it's variants, have demonstrated impressive performance in classification tasks. However, these methods are not directly applicable to regression tasks. In this paper, we present RankUp, a simple yet effective approach that adapts existing semi-supervised classification techniques to enhance the performance of regression tasks. RankUp achieves this by converting the original regression task into a ranking problem and training it concurrently with the original regression objective. This auxiliary ranking classifier outputs a classification result, thus enabling integration with existing semi-supervised classification methods. Moreover, we introduce regression distribution alignment (RDA), a complementary technique that further enhances RankUp's performance by refining pseudo-labels through distribution alignment. Despite its simplicity, RankUp, with or without RDA, achieves SOTA results in across a range of regression benchmarks, including computer vision, audio, and natural language processing tasks. Our code and log data are open-sourced at https://github.com/pm25/semi-supervised-regression.

TrustEMG-Net: Using Representation-Masking Transformer with U-Net for Surface Electromyography Enhancement

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is a widely employed bio-signal that captures human muscle activity via electrodes placed on the skin. Several studies have proposed methods to remove sEMG contaminants, as non-invasive measurements render sEMG susceptible to various contaminants. However, these approaches often rely on heuristic-based optimization and are sensitive to the contaminant type. A more potent, robust, and generalized sEMG denoising approach should be developed for various healthcare and human-computer interaction applications. This paper proposes a novel neural network (NN)-based sEMG denoising method called TrustEMG-Net. It leverages the potent nonlinear mapping capability and data-driven nature of NNs. TrustEMG-Net adopts a denoising autoencoder structure by combining U-Net with a Transformer encoder using a representation-masking approach. The proposed approach is evaluated using the Ninapro sEMG database with five common contamination types and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. Compared with existing sEMG denoising methods, TrustEMG-Net achieves exceptional performance across the five evaluation metrics, exhibiting a minimum improvement of 20%. Its superiority is consistent under various conditions, including SNRs ranging from -14 to 2 dB and five contaminant types. An ablation study further proves that the design of TrustEMG-Net contributes to its optimality, providing high-quality sEMG and serving as an effective, robust, and generalized denoising solution for sEMG applications.

MECG-E: Mamba-based ECG Enhancer for Baseline Wander Removal

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is an important non-invasive method for diagnosing cardiovascular disease. However, ECG signals are susceptible to noise contamination, such as electrical interference or signal wandering, which reduces diagnostic accuracy. Various ECG denoising methods have been proposed, but most existing methods yield suboptimal performance under very noisy conditions or require several steps during inference, leading to latency during online processing. In this paper, we propose a novel ECG denoising model, namely Mamba-based ECG Enhancer (MECG-E), which leverages the Mamba architecture known for its fast inference and outstanding nonlinear mapping capabilities. Experimental results indicate that MECG-E surpasses several well-known existing models across multiple metrics under different noise conditions. Additionally, MECG-E requires less inference time than state-of-the-art diffusion-based ECG denoisers, demonstrating the model's functionality and efficiency.