SearcharxivSearch

arXiv subjects

Huiyu Li

Publications and source records attributed to Huiyu Li.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Robust Dempster-Shafer Evidence Fusion with Chaos-Conflict Measurement and Historical-Experience Weighting

Multi-source evidence fusion under Dempster-Shafer theory faces two persistent challenges: existing conflict measures assess inter-evidence inconsistency and intra-evidence uncertainty independently, yielding incomplete evaluations, and current fusion methods evaluate evidence sources exclusively through instantaneous comparisns without exploiting their long-term reliability across diverse decision contexts. This paper proposes a unified evidence reasoning framework that addresses both limitations. Specifically, a chaos-conflict measurement is introduced to jointly quantify cross-evidence conflict and intra-evidence non-specificity, with five formally proven properties ensuring consistent assessment. A historical experience driven weighting scheme partitions the decision space via spectral clustering and applies regret theory to compute context-specific reliability profiles from past fusion outcomes. These mechanisms feed into a hybrid combination rule that adaptively balances uncertainty preservation against weighted consensus, controlled by the global conflict level, followed by a belief-interval decision strategy that enables robust classification without discarding epistemic uncertainty. Experiments on 16 real-world benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves an average F1 score of 85.78 and a mean AUC of 93.30, outperforming eight DST-based baselines and three gradient boosting methods. Ablation analysis confirms the contribution of each component we proposed. The framework offers an effective approach for adaptive evidence fusion in multi-source decision making.

cs.AI

Empowering Semantic-Sensitive Underwater Image Enhancement with VLM

In recent years, learning-based underwater image enhancement (UIE) techniques have rapidly evolved. However, distribution shifts between high-quality enhanced outputs and natural images can hinder semantic cue extraction for downstream vision tasks, thereby limiting the adaptability of existing enhancement models. To address this challenge, this work proposes a new learning mechanism that leverages Vision-Language Models (VLMs) to empower UIE models with semantic-sensitive capabilities. To be concrete, our strategy first generates textual descriptions of key objects from a degraded image via VLMs. Subsequently, a text-image alignment model remaps these relevant descriptions back onto the image to produce a spatial semantic guidance map. This map then steers the UIE network through a dual-guidance mechanism, which combines cross-attention and an explicit alignment loss. This forces the network to focus its restorative power on semantic-sensitive regions during image reconstruction, rather than pursuing a globally uniform improvement, thereby ensuring the faithful restoration of key object features. Experiments confirm that when our strategy is applied to different UIE baselines, significantly boosts their performance on perceptual quality metrics as well as enhances their performance on detection and segmentation tasks, validating its effectiveness and adaptability.

cs.CV

Effective Attention-Guided Multi-Scale Medical Network for Skin Lesion Segmentation

In the field of healthcare, precise skin lesion segmentation is crucial for the early detection and accurate diagnosis of skin diseases. Despite significant advances in deep learning for image processing, existing methods have yet to effectively address the challenges of irregular lesion shapes and low contrast. To address these issues, this paper proposes an innovative encoder-decoder network architecture based on multi-scale residual structures, capable of extracting rich feature information from different receptive fields to effectively identify lesion areas. By introducing a Multi-Resolution Multi-Channel Fusion (MRCF) module, our method captures cross-scale features, enhancing the clarity and accuracy of the extracted information. Furthermore, we propose a Cross-Mix Attention Module (CMAM), which redefines the attention scope and dynamically calculates weights across multiple contexts, thus improving the flexibility and depth of feature capture and enabling deeper exploration of subtle features. To overcome the information loss caused by skip connections in traditional U-Net, an External Attention Bridge (EAB) is introduced, facilitating the effective utilization of information in the decoder and compensating for the loss during upsampling. Extensive experimental evaluations on several skin lesion segmentation datasets demonstrate that the proposed model significantly outperforms existing transformer and convolutional neural network-based models, showcasing exceptional segmentation accuracy and robustness.

cs.CV

Data Exfiltration by Compression Attack: Definition and Evaluation on Medical Image Data

With the rapid expansion of data lakes storing health data and hosting AI algorithms, a prominent concern arises: how safe is it to export machine learning models from these data lakes? In particular, deep network models, widely used for health data processing, encode information from their training dataset, potentially leading to the leakage of sensitive information upon its export. This paper thoroughly examines this issue in the context of medical imaging data and introduces a novel data exfiltration attack based on image compression techniques. This attack, termed Data Exfiltration by Compression, requires only access to a data lake and is based on lossless or lossy image compression methods. Unlike previous data exfiltration attacks, it is compatible with any image processing task and depends solely on an exported network model without requiring any additional information to be collected during the training process. We explore various scenarios, and techniques to limit the size of the exported model and conceal the compression codes within the network. Using two public datasets of CT and MR images, we demonstrate that this attack can effectively steal medical images and reconstruct them outside the data lake with high fidelity, achieving an optimal balance between compression and reconstruction quality. Additionally, we investigate the impact of basic differential privacy measures, such as adding Gaussian noise to the model parameters, to prevent the Data Exfiltration by Compression Attack. We also show how the attacker can make their attack resilient to differential privacy at the expense of decreasing the number of stolen images. Lastly, we propose an alternative prevention strategy by fine-tuning the model to be exported.

cs.CR

Mitigating Data Exfiltration Attacks through Layer-Wise Learning Rate Decay Fine-Tuning

Data lakes enable the training of powerful machine learning models on sensitive, high-value medical datasets, but also introduce serious privacy risks due to potential leakage of protected health information. Recent studies show adversaries can exfiltrate training data by embedding latent representations into model parameters or inducing memorization via multi-task learning. These attacks disguise themselves as benign utility models while enabling reconstruction of high-fidelity medical images, posing severe privacy threats with legal and ethical implications. In this work, we propose a simple yet effective mitigation strategy that perturbs model parameters at export time through fine-tuning with a decaying layer-wise learning rate to corrupt embedded data without degrading task performance. Evaluations on DermaMNIST, ChestMNIST, and MIMIC-CXR show that our approach maintains utility task performance, effectively disrupts state-of-the-art exfiltration attacks, outperforms prior defenses, and renders exfiltrated data unusable for training. Ablations and discussions on adaptive attacks highlight challenges and future directions. Our findings offer a practical defense against data leakage in data lake-trained models and centralized federated learning.

cs.LG

Generative Medical Image Anonymization Based on Latent Code Projection and Optimization

Medical image anonymization aims to protect patient privacy by removing identifying information, while preserving the data utility to solve downstream tasks. In this paper, we address the medical image anonymization problem with a two-stage solution: latent code projection and optimization. In the projection stage, we design a streamlined encoder to project input images into a latent space and propose a co-training scheme to enhance the projection process. In the optimization stage, we refine the latent code using two deep loss functions designed to address the trade-off between identity protection and data utility dedicated to medical images. Through a comprehensive set of qualitative and quantitative experiments, we showcase the effectiveness of our approach on the MIMIC-CXR chest X-ray dataset by generating anonymized synthetic images that can serve as training set for detecting lung pathologies. Source codes are available at https://github.com/Huiyu-Li/GMIA.

cs.CV

Deep Distance Map Regression Network with Shape-aware Loss for Imbalanced Medical Image Segmentation

Small object segmentation, like tumor segmentation, is a difficult and critical task in the field of medical image analysis. Although deep learning based methods have achieved promising performance, they are restricted to the use of binary segmentation mask. Inspired by the rigorous mapping between binary segmentation mask and distance map, we adopt distance map as a novel ground truth and employ a network to fulfill the computation of distance map. Specially, we propose a new segmentation framework that incorporates the existing binary segmentation network and a light weight regression network (dubbed as LR-Net). Thus, the LR-Net can convert the distance map computation into a regression task and leverage the rich information of distance maps. Additionally, we derive a shape-aware loss by employing distance maps as penalty map to infer the complete shape of an object. We evaluated our approach on MICCAI 2017 Liver Tumor Segmentation (LiTS) Challenge dataset and a clinical dataset. Experimental results show that our approach outperforms the classification-based methods as well as other existing state-of-the-arts.

eess.IV

Enhanced Sampling of Protein Conformational Changes via True Reaction Coordinates from Energy Relaxation

The bottleneck in enhanced sampling lies in finding collective variables (CVs) that can effectively accelerate protein conformational changes. True reaction coordinates (tRCs) that can predict the committor are considered the optimal CVs, but identifying them requires unbiased natural reactive trajectories, which, paradoxically, depend on effective enhanced sampling. Using the generalized work functional method, we found that tRCs control both conformational changes and energy relaxation, enabling us to compute tRCs from energy relaxation simulations. Applying bias to tRCs accelerated conformational changes and ligand dissociation in HIV-1 protease and the PDZ2 domain by 10^5 to 10^15-fold. The resulting trajectories follow natural transition pathways, enabling efficient generation of natural reactive trajectories. In contrast, biased trajectories from empirical CVs often display non-physical features. Furthermore, by computing tRCs from a single protein structure, our method enables predictive sampling of conformational changes. These findings significantly broaden the range of protein functional processes accessible to molecular dynamics simulations.

physics.chem-ph

Reaction Coordinates are Optimal Channels of Energy Flow

Reaction coordinates (RCs) are the few essential coordinates of a protein that control its functional processes, such as allostery, enzymatic reaction, and conformational change. They are critical for understanding protein function and provide optimal enhanced sampling of protein conformational changes and states. Since the pioneering works in the late 1990s, identifying the correct and objectively provable RCs has been a central topic in molecular biophysics and chemical physics. This review summarizes the major advances in identifying RCs over the past 25 years, focusing on methods aimed at finding RCs that meet the rigorous committor criterion, widely accepted as the true RCs. Importantly, the newly developed physics-based energy flow theory and generalized work functional method provide a general and rigorous approach for identifying true RCs, revealing their physical nature as the optimal channels of energy flow in biomolecules.

physics.bio-ph

A Hybrid Deep Learning Framework for Stock Price Prediction Considering the Investor Sentiment of Online Forum Enhanced by Popularity

Stock price prediction has always been a difficult task for forecasters. Using cutting-edge deep learning techniques, stock price prediction based on investor sentiment extracted from online forums has become feasible. We propose a novel hybrid deep learning framework for predicting stock prices. The framework leverages the XLNET model to analyze the sentiment conveyed in user posts on online forums, combines these sentiments with the post popularity factor to compute daily group sentiments, and integrates this information with stock technical indicators into an improved BiLSTM-highway model for stock price prediction. Through a series of comparative experiments involving four stocks on the Chinese stock market, it is demonstrated that the hybrid framework effectively predicts stock prices. This study reveals the necessity of analyzing investors' textual views for stock price prediction.

cs.LG

Transition from localized to delocalized trajectories in random walk subject to random drives

Random walk subject to random drive has been extensively employed as a model for physical and biological processes. While equilibrium statistical physics has yielded significant insights into the distributions of dynamical fixed points of such a system, its non-equilibrium properties remain largely unexplored. In contrast, most real-world applications concern the dynamical aspects of this model. In particular, dynamical quantities like heat dissipation and work absorption play a central role in predicting and controlling non-equilibrium phases of matter. Recent advances in non-equilibrium statistical physics enable a more refined study of the dynamical aspects of random walk under random drives. We perform a numerical study on this model and demonstrate that it exhibits two distinct phases: a localized phase where typical random walk trajectories are non-extensive and confined to the neighborhood of fixed points, and a delocalized phase where typical random walk trajectories are extensive and can transition between fixed points. We propose different summary statistics for the heat dissipation and show that these two phases are distinctly different. Our characterization of these distinctive phases deepens the understanding of and provides novel strategies for the non-equilibrium phase of this model.

cond-mat.stat-mech

Detecting subtle macroscopic changes in a finite temperature classical scalar field with machine learning

The ability to detect macroscopic changes is important for probing the behaviors of experimental many-body systems from the classical to the quantum realm. Although abrupt changes near phase boundaries can easily be detected, subtle macroscopic changes are much more difficult to detect as the changes can be obscured by noise. In this study, as a toy model for detecting subtle macroscopic changes in many-body systems, we try to differentiate scalar field samples at varying temperatures. We compare different methods for making such differentiations, from physics method, statistics method, to AI method. Our finding suggests that the AI method outperforms both the statistical method and the physics method in its sensitivity. Our result provides a proof-of-concept that AI can potentially detect macroscopic changes in many-body systems that elude physical measures.

cond-mat.stat-mech

A Network Resource Allocation Recommendation Method with An Improved Similarity Measure

Recommender systems have been acknowledged as efficacious tools for managing information overload. Nevertheless, conventional algorithms adopted in such systems primarily emphasize precise recommendations and, consequently, overlook other vital aspects like the coverage, diversity, and novelty of items. This approach results in less exposure for long-tail items. In this paper, to personalize the recommendations and allocate recommendation resources more purposively, a method named PIM+RA is proposed. This method utilizes a bipartite network that incorporates self-connecting edges and weights. Furthermore, an improved Pearson correlation coefficient is employed for better redistribution. The evaluation of PIM+RA demonstrates a significant enhancement not only in accuracy but also in coverage, diversity, and novelty of the recommendation. It leads to a better balance in recommendation frequency by providing effective exposure to long-tail items, while allowing customized parameters to adjust the recommendation list bias.

cs.IR

Reactive Vortexes in a Naturally Activated Process: Non-Diffusive Rotational Fluxes at Transition State Uncovered by Persistent Homology

Dynamics of reaction coordinates during barrier-crossing are key to understand activated processes in complex systems such as proteins. The default assumption from Kramers physical intuition is that of a diffusion process. However, the dynamics of barrier-crossing in natural complex molecules are largely unexplored. Here we investigate the transition dynamics of alanine-dipeptide isomerization, the simplest complex system with a large number of non-reaction coordinates that can serve as an adequate thermal bath feeding energy into the reaction coordinates. We separate conformations along the time axis and construct the dynamic probability surface of reaction. We quantify its topological structure and rotational flux using persistent homology and differential form. Our results uncovered a region with strong reactive vortex in the configuration-time space, where the highest probability peak and the transition state ensemble are located. This reactive region contains strong rotational fluxes: Most reactive trajectories swirl multiple times around this region in the subspace of the two most-important reaction coordinates. Furthermore, the rotational fluxes result from cooperative movement along the isocommitter surfaces and orthogonal barrier-crossing. Overall, our findings offer a first glimpse into the reactive vortex regions that characterize the non-diffusive dynamics of barrier-crossing of a naturally occurring activation process.

physics.chem-ph

Data Stealing Attack on Medical Images: Is it Safe to Export Networks from Data Lakes?

In privacy-preserving machine learning, it is common that the owner of the learned model does not have any physical access to the data. Instead, only a secured remote access to a data lake is granted to the model owner without any ability to retrieve data from the data lake. Yet, the model owner may want to export the trained model periodically from the remote repository and a question arises whether this may cause is a risk of data leakage. In this paper, we introduce the concept of data stealing attack during the export of neural networks. It consists in hiding some information in the exported network that allows the reconstruction outside the data lake of images initially stored in that data lake. More precisely, we show that it is possible to train a network that can perform lossy image compression and at the same time solve some utility tasks such as image segmentation. The attack then proceeds by exporting the compression decoder network together with some image codes that leads to the image reconstruction outside the data lake. We explore the feasibility of such attacks on databases of CT and MR images, showing that it is possible to obtain perceptually meaningful reconstructions of the target dataset, and that the stolen dataset can be used in turns to solve a broad range of tasks. Comprehensive experiments and analyses show that data stealing attacks should be considered as a threat for sensitive imaging data sources.

cs.CR

A Dense Siamese U-Net trained with Edge Enhanced 3D IOU Loss for Image Co-segmentation

Image co-segmentation has attracted a lot of attentions in computer vision community. In this paper, we propose a new approach to image co-segmentation through introducing the dense connections into the decoder path of Siamese U-net and presenting a new edge enhanced 3D IOU loss measured over distance maps. Considering the rigorous mapping between the signed normalized distance map (SNDM) and the binary segmentation mask, we estimate the SNDMs directly from original images and use them to determine the segmentation results. We apply the Siamese U-net for solving this problem and improve its effectiveness by densely connecting each layer with subsequent layers in the decoder path. Furthermore, a new learning loss is designed to measure the 3D intersection over union (IOU) between the generated SNDMs and the labeled SNDMs. The experimental results on commonly used datasets for image co-segmentation demonstrate the effectiveness of our presented dense structure and edge enhanced 3D IOU loss of SNDM. To our best knowledge, they lead to the state-of-the-art performance on the Internet and iCoseg datasets.

cs.CV

Exact Topology of Dynamic Probability Surface of an Activated Process by Persistent Homology

To gain insight into reaction mechanism of activated processes, we introduce an exact approach for quantifying the topology of high-dimensional probability surfaces of the underlying dynamic processes. Instead of Morse indexes, we study the homology groups of a sequence of superlevel sets of the probability surface over high-dimensional configuration spaces using persistent homology. For alanine-dipeptide isomerization, a prototype of activated processes, we identify locations of probability peaks and connecting-ridges, along with measures of their global prominence. Instead of a saddle-point, the transition state ensemble (TSE) of conformations are at the most prominent probability peak after reactants/products, when proper reaction coordinates are included. Intuition-based models, even those exhibiting a double-well, fail to capture the dynamics of the activated process. Peak occurrence, prominence, and locations can be distorted upon subspace projection. While principal component analysis account for conformational variance, it inflates the complexity of the surface topology and destroy dynamic properties of the topological features. In contrast, TSE emerges naturally as the most prominent peak beyond the reactant/product basins, when projected to a subspace of minimum dimension containing the reaction coordinates. Our approach is general and can be applied to investigate the topology of high-dimensional probability surfaces of other activated process.

math-ph

Kinetic energy flows in activated dynamics of biomolecules

Protein conformational changes are activated processes essential for protein functions. Activation in a protein differs from activation in a small molecule in that it involves directed and systematic energy flows through preferred channels encoded in the protein structure. Understanding the nature of these energy flow channels and how energy flows through them during activation is critical for understanding protein conformational changes. We recently developed a rigorous statistical mechanical framework for understanding potential energy flows. Here we complete this theoretical framework with a rigorous theory for kinetic energy flows: potential and kinetic energy inter-convert when impressed forces oppose inertial forces whereas kinetic energy transfers directly from one coordinate to another when inertial forces oppose each other. This theory is applied to analyzing a prototypic system for biomolecular conformational dynamics: the isomerization of an alanine dipeptide. Among the two essential energy flow channels for this process, dihedral phi confronts the activation barrier, whereas dihedral theta receives energy from potential energy flows. Intriguingly, theta helps phi to cross the activation barrier by transferring to phi via direct kinetic energy flow all the energy it received: increase in theta caused by potential energy flow converts into increase in phi. As a compensation, theta receives kinetic energy from bond angle alpha via direct mechanism and bond angle beta via indirect mechanism.

physics.bio-ph