arXiv subjects

Sridha Sridharan

Publications and source records attributed to Sridha Sridharan.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Locus: LiDAR-based Place Recognition using Spatiotemporal Higher-Order Pooling

Place Recognition enables the estimation of a globally consistent map and trajectory by providing non-local constraints in Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM). This paper presents Locus, a novel place recognition method using 3D LiDAR point clouds in large-scale environments. We propose a method for extracting and encoding topological and temporal information related to components in a scene and demonstrate how the inclusion of this auxiliary information in place description leads to more robust and discriminative scene representations. Second-order pooling along with a non-linear transform is used to aggregate these multi-level features to generate a fixed-length global descriptor, which is invariant to the permutation of input features. The proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the KITTI dataset. Furthermore, Locus is demonstrated to be robust across several challenging situations such as occlusions and viewpoint changes in 3D LiDAR point clouds. The open-source implementation is available at: https://github.com/csiro-robotics/locus .

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arXiv2021

An Efficient Framework for Zero-Shot Sketch-Based Image Retrieval

Recently, Zero-shot Sketch-based Image Retrieval (ZS-SBIR) has attracted the attention of the computer vision community due to it's real-world applications, and the more realistic and challenging setting than found in SBIR. ZS-SBIR inherits the main challenges of multiple computer vision problems including content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR), zero-shot learning and domain adaptation. The majority of previous studies using deep neural networks have achieved improved results through either projecting sketch and images into a common low-dimensional space or transferring knowledge from seen to unseen classes. However, those approaches are trained with complex frameworks composed of multiple deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and are dependent on category-level word labels. This increases the requirements on training resources and datasets. In comparison, we propose a simple and efficient framework that does not require high computational training resources, and can be trained on datasets without semantic categorical labels. Furthermore, at training and inference stages our method only uses a single CNN. In this work, a pre-trained ImageNet CNN (e.g., ResNet50) is fine-tuned with three proposed learning objects: domain-aware quadruplet loss, semantic classification loss, and semantic knowledge preservation loss. The domain-aware quadruplet and semantic classification losses are introduced to learn discriminative, semantic and domain invariant features through considering ZS-SBIR as object detection and verification problem. ...

cs.CV↗

arXiv2021

Im2Mesh GAN: Accurate 3D Hand Mesh Recovery from a Single RGB Image

This work addresses hand mesh recovery from a single RGB image. In contrast to most of the existing approaches where the parametric hand models are employed as the prior, we show that the hand mesh can be learned directly from the input image. We propose a new type of GAN called Im2Mesh GAN to learn the mesh through end-to-end adversarial training. By interpreting the mesh as a graph, our model is able to capture the topological relationship among the mesh vertices. We also introduce a 3D surface descriptor into the GAN architecture to further capture the 3D features associated. We experiment two approaches where one can reap the benefits of coupled groundtruth data availability of images and the corresponding meshes, while the other combats the more challenging problem of mesh estimations without the corresponding groundtruth. Through extensive evaluations we demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art.

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arXiv2020

Patient-independent Epileptic Seizure Prediction using Deep Learning Models

Objective: Epilepsy is one of the most prevalent neurological diseases among humans and can lead to severe brain injuries, strokes, and brain tumors. Early detection of seizures can help to mitigate injuries, and can be used to aid the treatment of patients with epilepsy. The purpose of a seizure prediction system is to successfully identify the pre-ictal brain stage, which occurs before a seizure event. Patient-independent seizure prediction models are designed to offer accurate performance across multiple subjects within a dataset, and have been identified as a real-world solution to the seizure prediction problem. However, little attention has been given for designing such models to adapt to the high inter-subject variability in EEG data. Methods: We propose two patient-independent deep learning architectures with different learning strategies that can learn a global function utilizing data from multiple subjects. Results: Proposed models achieve state-of-the-art performance for seizure prediction on the CHB-MIT-EEG dataset, demonstrating 88.81% and 91.54% accuracy respectively. Conclusions: The Siamese model trained on the proposed learning strategy is able to learn patterns related to patient variations in data while predicting seizures. Significance: Our models show superior performance for patient-independent seizure prediction, and the same architecture can be used as a patient-specific classifier after model adaptation. We are the first study that employs model interpretation to understand classifier behavior for the task for seizure prediction, and we also show that the MFCC feature map utilized by our models contains predictive biomarkers related to interictal and pre-ictal brain states.

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arXiv2020

Domain Generalization in Biosignal Classification

Objective: When training machine learning models, we often assume that the training data and evaluation data are sampled from the same distribution. However, this assumption is violated when the model is evaluated on another unseen but similar database, even if that database contains the same classes. This problem is caused by domain-shift and can be solved using two approaches: domain adaptation and domain generalization. Simply, domain adaptation methods can access data from unseen domains during training; whereas in domain generalization, the unseen data is not available during training. Hence, domain generalization concerns models that perform well on inaccessible, domain-shifted data. Method: Our proposed domain generalization method represents an unseen domain using a set of known basis domains, afterwhich we classify the unseen domain using classifier fusion. To demonstrate our system, we employ a collection of heart sound databases that contain normal and abnormal sounds (classes). Results: Our proposed classifier fusion method achieves accuracy gains of up to 16% for four completely unseen domains. Conclusion: Recognizing the complexity induced by the inherent temporal nature of biosignal data, the two-stage method proposed in this study is able to effectively simplify the whole process of domain generalization while demonstrating good results on unseen domains and the adopted basis domains. Significance: To our best knowledge, this is the first study that investigates domain generalization for biosignal data. Our proposed learning strategy can be used to effectively learn domain-relevant features while being aware of the class differences in the data.

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arXiv2020

Fast & Slow Learning: Incorporating Synthetic Gradients in Neural Memory Controllers

Neural Memory Networks (NMNs) have received increased attention in recent years compared to deep architectures that use a constrained memory. Despite their new appeal, the success of NMNs hinges on the ability of the gradient-based optimiser to perform incremental training of the NMN controllers, determining how to leverage their high capacity for knowledge retrieval. This means that while excellent performance can be achieved when the training data is consistent and well distributed, rare data samples are hard to learn from as the controllers fail to incorporate them effectively during model training. Drawing inspiration from the human cognition process, in particular the utilisation of neuromodulators in the human brain, we propose to decouple the learning process of the NMN controllers to allow them to achieve flexible, rapid adaptation in the presence of new information. This trait is highly beneficial for meta-learning tasks where the memory controllers must quickly grasp abstract concepts in the target domain, and adapt stored knowledge. This allows the NMN controllers to quickly determine which memories are to be retained and which are to be erased, and swiftly adapt their strategy to the new task at hand. Through both quantitative and qualitative evaluations on multiple public benchmarks, including classification and regression tasks, we demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach. Our evaluations not only highlight the ability of the proposed NMN architecture to outperform the current state-of-the-art methods, but also provide insights on how the proposed augmentations help achieve such superior results. In addition, we demonstrate the practical implications of the proposed learning strategy, where the feedback path can be shared among multiple neural memory networks as a mechanism for knowledge sharing.

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arXiv2020

Memory based fusion for multi-modal deep learning

The use of multi-modal data for deep machine learning has shown promise when compared to uni-modal approaches with fusion of multi-modal features resulting in improved performance in several applications. However, most state-of-the-art methods use naive fusion which processes feature streams independently, ignoring possible long-term dependencies within the data during fusion. In this paper, we present a novel Memory based Attentive Fusion layer, which fuses modes by incorporating both the current features and longterm dependencies in the data, thus allowing the model to understand the relative importance of modes over time. We introduce an explicit memory block within the fusion layer which stores features containing long-term dependencies of the fused data. The feature inputs from uni-modal encoders are fused through attentive composition and transformation followed by naive fusion of the resultant memory derived features with layer inputs. Following state-of-the-art methods, we have evaluated the performance and the generalizability of the proposed fusion approach on two different datasets with different modalities. In our experiments, we replace the naive fusion layer in benchmark networks with our proposed layer to enable a fair comparison. Experimental results indicate that the MBAF layer can generalise across different modalities and networks to enhance fusion and improve performance.

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arXiv2020

Attention Driven Fusion for Multi-Modal Emotion Recognition

Deep learning has emerged as a powerful alternative to hand-crafted methods for emotion recognition on combined acoustic and text modalities. Baseline systems model emotion information in text and acoustic modes independently using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), followed by applying attention, fusion, and classification. In this paper, we present a deep learning-based approach to exploit and fuse text and acoustic data for emotion classification. We utilize a SincNet layer, based on parameterized sinc functions with band-pass filters, to extract acoustic features from raw audio followed by a DCNN. This approach learns filter banks tuned for emotion recognition and provides more effective features compared to directly applying convolutions over the raw speech signal. For text processing, we use two branches (a DCNN and a Bi-direction RNN followed by a DCNN) in parallel where cross attention is introduced to infer the N-gram level correlations on hidden representations received from the Bi-RNN. Following existing state-of-the-art, we evaluate the performance of the proposed system on the IEMOCAP dataset. Experimental results indicate that the proposed system outperforms existing methods, achieving 3.5% improvement in weighted accuracy.

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arXiv2020

A Robust Interpretable Deep Learning Classifier for Heart Anomaly Detection Without Segmentation

Traditionally, abnormal heart sound classification is framed as a three-stage process. The first stage involves segmenting the phonocardiogram to detect fundamental heart sounds; after which features are extracted and classification is performed. Some researchers in the field argue the segmentation step is an unwanted computational burden, whereas others embrace it as a prior step to feature extraction. When comparing accuracies achieved by studies that have segmented heart sounds before analysis with those who have overlooked that step, the question of whether to segment heart sounds before feature extraction is still open. In this study, we explicitly examine the importance of heart sound segmentation as a prior step for heart sound classification, and then seek to apply the obtained insights to propose a robust classifier for abnormal heart sound detection. Furthermore, recognizing the pressing need for explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI) models in the medical domain, we also unveil hidden representations learned by the classifier using model interpretation techniques. Experimental results demonstrate that the segmentation plays an essential role in abnormal heart sound classification. Our new classifier is also shown to be robust, stable and most importantly, explainable, with an accuracy of almost 100% on the widely used PhysioNet dataset.

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arXiv2020

Elasticity Meets Continuous-Time: Map-Centric Dense 3D LiDAR SLAM

Map-centric SLAM utilizes elasticity as a means of loop closure. This approach reduces the cost of loop closure while still provides large-scale fusion-based dense maps, when compared to the trajectory-centric SLAM approaches. In this paper, we present a novel framework for 3D LiDAR-based map-centric SLAM. Having the advantages of a map-centric approach, our method exhibits new features to overcome the shortcomings of existing systems, associated with multi-modal sensor fusion and LiDAR motion distortion. This is accomplished through the use of a local Continuous-Time (CT) trajectory representation. Also, our surface resolution preservative matching algorithm and Wishart-based surfel fusion model enables non-redundant yet dense mapping. Furthermore, we present a robust metric loop closure model to make the approach stable regardless of where the loop closure occurs. Finally, we demonstrate our approach through both simulation and real data experiments using multiple sensor payload configurations and environments to illustrate its utility and robustness.

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arXiv2020

Two-Stream Deep Feature Modelling for Automated Video Endoscopy Data Analysis

Automating the analysis of imagery of the Gastrointestinal (GI) tract captured during endoscopy procedures has substantial potential benefits for patients, as it can provide diagnostic support to medical practitioners and reduce mistakes via human error. To further the development of such methods, we propose a two-stream model for endoscopic image analysis. Our model fuses two streams of deep feature inputs by mapping their inherent relations through a novel relational network model, to better model symptoms and classify the image. In contrast to handcrafted feature-based models, our proposed network is able to learn features automatically and outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods on two public datasets: KVASIR and Nerthus. Our extensive evaluations illustrate the importance of having two streams of inputs instead of a single stream and also demonstrates the merits of the proposed relational network architecture to combine those streams.

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arXiv2020

Meta Transfer Learning for Emotion Recognition

Deep learning has been widely adopted in automatic emotion recognition and has lead to significant progress in the field. However, due to insufficient annotated emotion datasets, pre-trained models are limited in their generalization capability and thus lead to poor performance on novel test sets. To mitigate this challenge, transfer learning performing fine-tuning on pre-trained models has been applied. However, the fine-tuned knowledge may overwrite and/or discard important knowledge learned from pre-trained models. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a PathNet-based transfer learning method that is able to transfer emotional knowledge learned from one visual/audio emotion domain to another visual/audio emotion domain, and transfer the emotional knowledge learned from multiple audio emotion domains into one another to improve overall emotion recognition accuracy. To show the robustness of our proposed system, various sets of experiments for facial expression recognition and speech emotion recognition task on three emotion datasets: SAVEE, EMODB, and eNTERFACE have been carried out. The experimental results indicate that our proposed system is capable of improving the performance of emotion recognition, making its performance substantially superior to the recent proposed fine-tuning/pre-trained models based transfer learning methods.

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arXiv2020

MTRNet++: One-stage Mask-based Scene Text Eraser

A precise, controllable, interpretable and easily trainable text removal approach is necessary for both user-specific and large-scale text removal applications. To achieve this, we propose a one-stage mask-based text inpainting network, MTRNet++. It has a novel architecture that includes mask-refine, coarse-inpainting and fine-inpainting branches, and attention blocks. With this architecture, MTRNet++ can remove text either with or without an external mask. It achieves state-of-the-art results on both the Oxford and SCUT datasets without using external ground-truth masks. The results of ablation studies demonstrate that the proposed multi-branch architecture with attention blocks is effective and essential. It also demonstrates controllability and interpretability.

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arXiv2020

Hierarchical Attention Network for Action Segmentation

The temporal segmentation of events is an essential task and a precursor for the automatic recognition of human actions in the video. Several attempts have been made to capture frame-level salient aspects through attention but they lack the capacity to effectively map the temporal relationships in between the frames as they only capture a limited span of temporal dependencies. To this end we propose a complete end-to-end supervised learning approach that can better learn relationships between actions over time, thus improving the overall segmentation performance. The proposed hierarchical recurrent attention framework analyses the input video at multiple temporal scales, to form embeddings at frame level and segment level, and perform fine-grained action segmentation. This generates a simple, lightweight, yet extremely effective architecture for segmenting continuous video streams and has multiple application domains. We evaluate our system on multiple challenging public benchmark datasets, including MERL Shopping, 50 salads, and Georgia Tech Egocentric datasets, and achieves state-of-the-art performance. The evaluated datasets encompass numerous video capture settings which are inclusive of static overhead camera views and dynamic, ego-centric head-mounted camera views, demonstrating the direct applicability of the proposed framework in a variety of settings.

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arXiv2020

End-to-End Domain Adaptive Attention Network for Cross-Domain Person Re-Identification

Person re-identification (re-ID) remains challenging in a real-world scenario, as it requires a trained network to generalise to totally unseen target data in the presence of variations across domains. Recently, generative adversarial models have been widely adopted to enhance the diversity of training data. These approaches, however, often fail to generalise to other domains, as existing generative person re-identification models have a disconnect between the generative component and the discriminative feature learning stage. To address the on-going challenges regarding model generalisation, we propose an end-to-end domain adaptive attention network to jointly translate images between domains and learn discriminative re-id features in a single framework. To address the domain gap challenge, we introduce an attention module for image translation from source to target domains without affecting the identity of a person. More specifically, attention is directed to the background instead of the entire image of the person, ensuring identifying characteristics of the subject are preserved. The proposed joint learning network results in a significant performance improvement over state-of-the-art methods on several benchmark datasets.

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arXiv2020

Deep Auto-Encoders with Sequential Learning for Multimodal Dimensional Emotion Recognition

Multimodal dimensional emotion recognition has drawn a great attention from the affective computing community and numerous schemes have been extensively investigated, making a significant progress in this area. However, several questions still remain unanswered for most of existing approaches including: (i) how to simultaneously learn compact yet representative features from multimodal data, (ii) how to effectively capture complementary features from multimodal streams, and (iii) how to perform all the tasks in an end-to-end manner. To address these challenges, in this paper, we propose a novel deep neural network architecture consisting of a two-stream auto-encoder and a long short term memory for effectively integrating visual and audio signal streams for emotion recognition. To validate the robustness of our proposed architecture, we carry out extensive experiments on the multimodal emotion in the wild dataset: RECOLA. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves state-of-the-art recognition performance and surpasses existing schemes by a significant margin.

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arXiv2020

Heart Sound Segmentation using Bidirectional LSTMs with Attention

This paper proposes a novel framework for the segmentation of phonocardiogram (PCG) signals into heart states, exploiting the temporal evolution of the PCG as well as considering the salient information that it provides for the detection of the heart state. We propose the use of recurrent neural networks and exploit recent advancements in attention based learning to segment the PCG signal. This allows the network to identify the most salient aspects of the signal and disregard uninformative information. The proposed method attains state-of-the-art performance on multiple benchmarks including both human and animal heart recordings. Furthermore, we empirically analyse different feature combinations including envelop features, wavelet and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), and provide quantitative measurements that explore the importance of different features in the proposed approach. We demonstrate that a recurrent neural network coupled with attention mechanisms can effectively learn from irregular and noisy PCG recordings. Our analysis of different feature combinations shows that MFCC features and their derivatives offer the best performance compared to classical wavelet and envelop features. Heart sound segmentation is a crucial pre-processing step for many diagnostic applications. The proposed method provides a cost effective alternative to labour extensive manual segmentation, and provides a more accurate segmentation than existing methods. As such, it can improve the performance of further analysis including the detection of murmurs and ejection clicks. The proposed method is also applicable for detection and segmentation of other one dimensional biomedical signals.

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arXiv2020

Temporarily-Aware Context Modelling using Generative Adversarial Networks for Speech Activity Detection

This paper presents a novel framework for Speech Activity Detection (SAD). Inspired by the recent success of multi-task learning approaches in the speech processing domain, we propose a novel joint learning framework for SAD. We utilise generative adversarial networks to automatically learn a loss function for joint prediction of the frame-wise speech/ non-speech classifications together with the next audio segment. In order to exploit the temporal relationships within the input signal, we propose a temporal discriminator which aims to ensure that the predicted signal is temporally consistent. We evaluate the proposed framework on multiple public benchmarks, including NIST OpenSAT' 17, AMI Meeting and HAVIC, where we demonstrate its capability to outperform state-of-the-art SAD approaches. Furthermore, our cross-database evaluations demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach across different languages, accents, and acoustic environments.

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