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Dan Cheng

Publications and source records attributed to Dan Cheng.

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2016

Multiple testing of local maxima for detection of peaks on the (celestial) sphere

We present a topological multiple testing scheme for detecting peaks on the sphere under isotropic Gaussian noise, where tests are performed at local maxima of the observed field filtered by the spherical needlet transform. Our setting is different from the standard Euclidean/large same asymptotic framework, yet highly relevant to realistic experimental circumstances for some important areas of application in astronomy. More precisely, we focus on cases where a single realization of a smooth isotropic Gaussian random field on the sphere is observed, and a number of well-localized signals are superimposed on such background field. The proposed algorithms, combined with the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure for thresholding p-values, provide asymptotic strong control of the False Discovery Rate (FDR) and power consistency as the signal strength and the frequency of the needlet transform get large. This novel multiple testing method is illustrated in a simulation of point-source detection in Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) data.

math.ST↗
arXiv2016

Excursion probability of Gaussian random fields on sphere

Let $X=\{X(x): x\in\mathbb{S}^N\}$ be a real-valued, centered Gaussian random field indexed on the $N$-dimensional unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^N$. Approximations to the excursion probability ${\mathbb{P}}\{\sup_{x\in\mathbb{S}^N}X(x)\ge u\}$, as $u\to\infty$, are obtained for two cases: (i) $X$ is locally isotropic and its sample functions are non-smooth and; (ii) $X$ is isotropic and its sample functions are twice differentiable. For case (i), the excursion probability can be studied by applying the results in Piterbarg (Asymptotic Methods in the Theory of Gaussian Processes and Fields (1996) Amer. Math. Soc.), Mikhaleva and Piterbarg (Theory Probab. Appl. 41 (1997) 367--379) and Chan and Lai (Ann. Probab. 34 (2006) 80--121). It is shown that the asymptotics of ${\mathbb{P}}\{\sup_{x\in\mathbb {S}^N}X(x)\ge u\}$ is similar to Pickands' approximation on the Euclidean space which involves Pickands' constant. For case (ii), we apply the expected Euler characteristic method to obtain a more precise approximation such that the error is super-exponentially small.

math.PR↗
arXiv2015

Excursion Probabilities of Isotropic and Locally Isotropic Gaussian Random Fields on Manifolds

Let $X= \{X(p), p\in M\}$ be a centered Gaussian random field, where $M$ is a smooth Riemannian manifold. For a suitable compact subset $D\subset M$, we obtain the approximations to excursion probability $\mathbb{P}\{\sup_{p\in D} X(p) \ge u \}$, as $u\to \infty$, for two cases: (i) $X$ is smooth and isotropic; (ii) $X$ is non-smooth and locally isotropic. For case (i), the expected Euler characteristic approximation is formulated explicitly; while for case (ii), it is shown that the asymptotics is similar to Pickands' approximation on Euclidean space which involves Pickands' constant and the volume of $D$. These extend the results in \citep{Cheng:2014} from sphere to general Riemannian manifolds.

math.PR↗
arXiv2015

Excursion Probability of Certain Non-centered Smooth Gaussian Random Fields

Let $X = \{X(t): t\in T \}$ be a non-centered, unit-variance, smooth Gaussian random field indexed on some parameter space $T$, and let $A_u(X,T) = \{t\in T: X(t)\geq u\}$ be the excursion set of $X$ exceeding level $u$. Under certain smoothness and regularity conditions, it is shown that, as $u\to \infty$, the excursion probability $\mathbb{P}\{\sup_{t\in T} X(t)\ge u \}$ can be approximated by the expected Euler characteristic of $A_u(X,T)$, denoted by $\mathbb{E}\{χ(A_u(X,T))\}$, such that the error is super-exponentially small. This verifies the expected Euler characteristic heuristic for a large class of non-centered smooth Gaussian random fields and provides a much more accurate approximation compared with those existing results by the double sum method. The explicit formulae for $\mathbb{E}\{χ(A_u(X,T))\}$ are also derived for two cases: (i) $T$ is a rectangle and $X-\mathbb{E} X$ is stationary; (ii) $T$ is an $N$-dimensional sphere and $X-\mathbb{E} X$ is isotropic.

math.PR↗
arXiv2014

Distribution of the Height of Local Maxima of Gaussian Random Fields

Let $\{f(t): t\in T\}$ be a smooth Gaussian random field over a parameter space $T$, where $T$ may be a subset of Euclidean space or, more generally, a Riemannian manifold. For any local maximum of $f(t)$ located at $t_0$ in the interior of $T$, we provide general formulae and asymptotic approximations for both the tail distribution of the height of a local maximum $\mathbb{P}\{f(t_0)>u | t_0 \text{is a local maximum of} f(t) \}$ and the overshoot distribution of a local maximum $\mathbb{P}\{f(t_0)>u+v | t_0 \text{is a local maximum of} f(t) \text{and} f(t_0)>v\}$. Assuming further that $f$ is isotropic, we apply techniques from random matrix theory related to the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble to compute such conditional probabilities explicitly when $T$ is Euclidean or a sphere of arbitrary dimension. Such calculations are motivated by the statistical problem of detecting peaks in the presence of smooth Gaussian noise.

math.PR↗
arXiv2014

Multiple Testing of Local Maxima for Detection of Peaks in Random Fields

A topological multiple testing scheme is presented for detecting peaks in images under stationary ergodic Gaussian noise, where tests are performed at local maxima of the smoothed observed signals. The procedure generalizes the one-dimensional scheme of Schwartzman et al. (2011) to Euclidean domains of arbitrary dimension. Two methods are developed according to two different ways of computing p-values: (i) using the exact distribution of the height of local maxima (Cheng and Schwartzman, 2014), available explicitly when the noise field is isotropic; (ii) using an approximation to the overshoot distribution of local maxima above a pre-threshold (Cheng and Schwartzman, 2014), applicable when the exact distribution is unknown, such as when the stationary noise field is non-isotropic. The algorithms, combined with the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure for thresholding p-values, provide asymptotic strong control of the False Discovery Rate (FDR) and power consistency, with specific rates, as the search space and signal strength get large. The optimal smoothing bandwidth and optimal pre-threshold are obtained to achieve maximum power. Simulations show that FDR levels are maintained in non-asymptotic conditions. The methods are illustrated in a nanoscopy image analysis problem of detecting fluorescent molecules against the image background.

stat.ME↗