arXiv subjects

Fabian J. E. Telschow

Publications and source records attributed to Fabian J. E. Telschow.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Spatial Confidence Regions for Piecewise Continuous Processes

In scientific disciplines such as neuroimaging, climatology, and cosmology it is useful to study the uncertainty of excursion sets of imaging data. While the case of imaging data obtained from a single study condition has already been intensively studied, confidence statements about the intersection, or union, of the excursion sets derived from different subject conditions have only been introduced recently. Such methods aim to model the images from different study conditions as asymptotically Gaussian random processes with differentiable sample paths. In this work, we remove the restricting condition of differentiability and only require continuity of the sample paths. This allows for a wider range of applications including many settings which cannot be treated with the existing theory. To achieve this, we introduce a novel notion of convergence on piecewise continuous functions over finite partitions. This notion is of interest in its own right, as it implies convergence results for maxima of sequences of piecewise continuous functions over sequences of sets. Generalizing well-known results such as the extended continuous mapping theorem, this novel convergence notion also allows us to construct for the first time confidence regions for mathematically challenging examples such as symmetric differences of excursion sets.

math.ST↗

arXiv2024

SCoRE Sets: A Versatile Framework for Simultaneous Inference

We study asymptotic statistical inference in the space of bounded functions endowed with the supremums norm over an arbitrary metric space $S$ using a novel concept: Simultaneous COnfidence Region of Excursion (SCoRE) Sets. They simultaneously quantify the uncertainty of several lower and upper excursion sets of a target function. We investigate their connection to multiple hypothesis tests controlling the familywise error rate in the strong sense and show that they grant a unifying perspective on several statistical inference tools such as simultaneous confidence bands, quantification of uncertainties in level set estimation, for example, CoPE sets, and multiple hypothesis testing over $S$, for example, finding relevant differences or regions of equivalence within $S$. In particular, our abstract setting allows us to refine and reduce the assumptions in recent articles on CoPE sets and relevance and equivalence testing using the supremums norm.

math.ST↗

arXiv2023

Robust FWER control in Neuroimaging using Random Field Theory: Riding the SuRF to Continuous Land Part 2

Historically, applications of RFT in fMRI have relied on assumptions of smoothness, stationarity and Gaussianity. The first two assumptions have been addressed in Part 1 of this article series. Here we address the severe non-Gaussianity of (real) fMRI data to greatly improve the performance of voxelwise RFT in fMRI group analysis. In particular, we introduce a transformation which accelerates the convergence of the Central Limit Theorem allowing us to rely on limiting Gaussianity of the test-statistic. We shall show that, when the GKF is combined with the Gaussianization transformation, we are able to accurately estimate the EEC of the excursion set of the transformed test-statistic even when the data is non-Gaussian. This allows us to drop the key assumptions of RFT inference and enables us to provide a fast approach which correctly controls the voxelwise false positive rate in fMRI. We employ a big data \cite{Eklund2016} style validation in which we process resting state data from 7000 subjects from the UK BioBank with fake task designs. We resample from this data to create realistic noise and use this to demonstrate that the error rate is correctly controlled.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2023

Inverse set estimation and inversion of simultaneous confidence intervals

Motivated by the questions of risk assessment in climatology (temperature change in North America) and medicine (impact of statin usage and COVID-19 on hospitalized patients), we address the problem of estimating the set in the domain of a function whose image equals a predefined subset. Existing methods that construct confidence sets require strict assumptions. We generalize the estimation of such sets to dense and non-dense domains with protection against "data peeking" by proving that confidence sets of multiple levels can be simultaneously constructed with the desired confidence non-asymptotically through inverting simultaneous confidence bands. A non-parametric bootstrap algorithm and code are provided.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2022

Functional delta residuals and applications to simultaneous confidence bands of moment based statistics

Given a functional central limit (fCLT) for an estimator and a parameter transformation, we construct random processes, called functional delta residuals, which asymptotically have the same covariance structure as the limit process of the functional delta method. An explicit construction of these residuals for transformations of moment-based estimators and a multiplier bootstrap fCLT for the resulting functional delta residuals are proven. The latter is used to consistently estimate the quantiles of the maximum of the limit process of the functional delta method in order to construct asymptotically valid simultaneous confidence bands for the transformed functional parameters. Performance of the coverage rate of the developed construction, applied to functional versions of Cohen's d, skewness and kurtosis, is illustrated in simulations and their application to test Gaussianity is discussed.

math.ST↗

arXiv2022

On the finiteness of the second moment of the number of critical points of Gaussian random fields

We prove that the second moment of the number of critical points of any sufficiently regular random field, for example with almost surely $ C^3 $ sample paths, defined over a compact Whitney stratified manifold is finite. Our results hold without the assumption of stationarity - which has traditionally been assumed in other work. Under stationarity we demonstrate that our imposed conditions imply the generalized Geman condition of Estrade 2016.

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

Confidence Tubes for Curves on SO(3) and Identification of Subject-Specific Gait Change after Kneeling

In order to identify changes of gait patterns, e.g. due to prolonged occupational kneeling, which is believed to be major risk factor, among others, for the development of knee osteoarthritis, we develop confidence tubes for curves following a Gaussian perturbation model on SO(3). These are based on an application of the Gaussian kinematic formula to a process of Hotelling statistics and we approximate them by a computible version, for which we show convergence. Simulations endorse our method, which in application to gait curves from eight volunteers undergoing kneeling tasks, identifies phases of the gait cycle that have changed due to kneeling tasks. We find that after kneeling, deviation from normal gait is stronger, in particular for older aged male volunteers. Notably our method adjusts for different walking speeds and marker replacement at different visits.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2019

Simultaneous Confidence Bands for Functional Data Using the Gaussian Kinematic Formula

This article constructs simultaneous confidence bands (SCBs) for functional parameters using the Gaussian Kinematic formula of $t$-processes (tGKF). Although the tGKF relies on Gaussianity, we show that a central limit theorem (CLT) for the parameter of interest is enough to obtain asymptotically precise covering rates even for non-Gaussian processes. As a proof of concept we study the functional signal-plus-noise model and derive a CLT for an estimator of the Lipschitz-Killing curvatures, the only data dependent quantities in the tGKF SCBs. Extensions to discrete sampling with additive observation noise are discussed using scale space ideas from regression analysis. Here we provide sufficient conditions on the processes and kernels to obtain convergence of the functional scale space surface. The theoretical work is accompanied by a simulation study comparing different methods to construct SCBs for the population mean. We show that the tGKF works well even for small sample sizes and only a Rademacher multiplier-$t$ bootstrap performs similarily well. For larger sample sizes the tGKF often outperforms the bootstrap methods and is computational faster. We apply the method to diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) fibers using a scale space approach for the difference of population means. R code is available in our Rpackage SCBfda.

math.ST↗

arXiv2016

Functional Inference on Rotational Curves and Identification of Human Gait at the Knee Joint

We extend Gaussian perturbation models in classical functional data analysis to the three-dimensional rotational group where a zero-mean Gaussian process in the Lie algebra under the Lie exponential spreads multiplicatively around a central curve. As an estimator, we introduce point-wise extrinsic mean curves which feature strong perturbation consistency, and which are asymptotically a.s. unique and differentiable, if the model is so. Further, we consider the group action of time warping and that of spatial isometries that are connected to the identity. The latter can be asymptotically consistently estimated if lifted to the unit quaternions. Introducing a generic loss for Lie groups, the former can be estimated, and based on curve length, due to asymptotic differentiability, we propose two-sample permutation tests involving various combinations of the group actions. This methodology allows inference on gait patterns due to the rotational motion of the lower leg with respect to the upper leg. This was previously not possible because, among others, the usual analysis of separate Euler angles is not independent of marker placement, even if performed by trained specialists.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2012

Representation by Integrating Reproducing Kernels

Based on direct integrals, a framework allowing to integrate a parametrised family of reproducing kernels with respect to some measure on the parameter space is developed. By pointwise integration, one obtains again a reproducing kernel whose corresponding Hilbert space is given as the image of the direct integral of the individual Hilbert spaces under the summation operator. This generalises the well-known results for finite sums of reproducing kernels; however, many more special cases are subsumed under this approach: so-called Mercer kernels obtained through series expansions; kernels generated by integral transforms; mixtures of positive definite functions; and in particular scale-mixtures of radial basis functions. This opens new vistas into known results, e.g. generalising the Kramer sampling theorem; it also offers interesting connections between measurements and integral transforms, e.g. allowing to apply the representer theorem in certain inverse problems, or bounding the pointwise error in the image domain when observing the pre-image under an integral transform.

math.FA↗