3D Reconstruction with Coronary Artery Based on Curve Descriptor and Projection Geometry-Constrained Vasculature Matching

This paper presents a novel method based on a curve descriptor and projection geometry constrained for vessel matching. First, an LM (Leveberg–Marquardt) algorithm is proposed to optimize the matrix of geometric transformation. Combining with parameter adjusting and the trust region method, the error between 3D reconstructed vessel projection and the actual vessel can be minimized. Then, CBOCD (curvature and brightness order curve descriptor) is proposed to indicate the degree of the self-occlusion of blood vessels during angiography. Next, the error matrix constructed from the error of epipolar matching is used in point pairs matching of the vascular through dynamic programming. Finally, the recorded radius of vessels helps to construct ellipse cross-sections and samples on it to get a point set around the centerline and the point set is converted to mesh for reconstructing the surface of vessels. The validity and applicability of the proposed methods have been verified through experiments that result in the significant improvement of 3D reconstruction accuracy in terms of average back-projection errors. Simultaneously, due to precise point-pair matching, the smoothness of the reconstructed 3D coronary artery is guaranteed.

A Riemannian Newton trust-region method for fitting Gaussian mixture models

Gaussian Mixture Models are a powerful tool in Data Science and Statistics that are mainly used for clustering and density approximation. The task of estimating the model parameters is in practice often solved by the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm which has its benefits in its simplicity and low per-iteration costs. However, the EM converges slowly if there is a large share of hidden information or overlapping clusters. Recent advances in Manifold Optimization for Gaussian Mixture Models have gained increasing interest. We introduce an explicit formula for the Riemannian Hessian for Gaussian Mixture Models. On top, we propose a new Riemannian Newton Trust-Region method which outperforms current approaches both in terms of runtime and number of iterations. We apply our method on clustering problems and density approximation tasks. Our method is very powerful for data with a large share of hidden information compared to existing methods.

Coupled Learning Enabled Stochastic Programming with Endogenous Uncertainty

Predictive analytics, empowered by machine learning, is usually followed by decision-making problems in prescriptive analytics. We extend the previous sequential prediction-optimization paradigm to a coupled scheme such that the prediction model can guide the decision problem to produce coordinated decisions yielding higher levels of performance. Specifically, for stochastic programming (SP) models with latently decision-dependent uncertainty, without any parametric assumption of the latent dependency, we develop a coupled learning enabled optimization (CLEO) algorithm in which the learning step of predicting the local dependency and the optimization step of computing a candidate decision are conducted interactively. The CLEO algorithm automatically balances the exploration and exploitation via the trust region method with active sampling. Under certain assumptions, we show that the sequence of solutions provided by CLEO converges to a directional stationary point of the original nonconvex and nonsmooth SP problem with probability 1. In addition, we present preliminary experimental results which demonstrate the computational potential of this data-driven approach.

A novel method for asynchronous source localisation based on time of arrival measurements

Source localisation is an important component in the application of wireless sensor networks, and plays a key role in environmental monitoring, healthcare and battlefield surveillance and so on. In this article, the source localisation problem based on time-of-arrival measurements in asynchronous sensor networks is studied. Because of imperfect time synchronisation between the anchor nodes and the signal source node, the unknown parameter of start transmission time of signal source makes the localisation problem further sophisticated. The derived maximum-likelihood estimator cost function with multiple local minimum is non-linear and non-convex. A novel two-step method which can solve the global minimum is proposed. First, by leveraging dimensionality reduction, the maximum (minimum) distance maximum (minimum) time-of-arrival matching-based second-order Monte Carlo method is applied to find a rough initial position of the signal source with low computational complexity. Then, the rough initial position value is refined using trust region method to obtain the final positioning result. Comparative analysis with state-of-the-art semidefinite programming and min–max criterion-based algorithms are conducted. Simulations show that the proposed method is superior in terms of localisation accuracy and computational complexity, and can reach the optimality benchmark of Cramér–Rao Lower Bound even in high signal-to-noise ratio environments.

An Active Set Trust-Region Method for Bound-Constrained Optimization

This paper discusses an active set trust-region algorithm for bound-constrained optimization problems. A sufficient descent condition is used as a computational measure to identify whether the function value is reduced or not. To get our complexity result, a critical measure is used which is computationally better than the other known critical measures. Under the positive definiteness of approximated Hessian matrices restricted to the subspace of non-active variables, it will be shown that unlimited zigzagging cannot occur. It is shown that our algorithm is competitive in comparison with the state-of-the-art solvers for solving an ill-conditioned bound-constrained least-squares problem.

A modified filter nonmonotone adaptive retrospective trust region method

In this paper, aiming at the unconstrained optimization problem, a new nonmonotone adaptive retrospective trust region line search method is presented, which takes advantages of multidimensional filter technique to increase the acceptance probability of the trial step. The new nonmonotone trust region ratio is presented, which based on the convex combination of nonmonotone trust region ratio and retrospective ratio. The global convergence and the superlinear convergence of the algorithm are shown in the right circumstances. Comparative numerical experiments show the better effective and robustness.

An Efficient Integrated Framework of Reliability-Based Robust Design Optimization for Computation-Intensive Structures

When carrying out robust design optimization for complex engineering structures, they are computed by finite element software and are always computation-intensive. Aim at this problem, the paper proposes an efficient integrated framework of Reliability-based Robust Design Optimization (RBRDO). Firstly, the conventional RBRDO problem is changed as percentile form, that is, the improved percentile formulation of computing the objective robustness and probabilistic constraints is presented by resorting to the employment of Performance Measure Approach (PMA). Secondly, the above improved RBRDO problem is simplified by a series of new approximation methods due to the need of reducing computation. An efficient approximation method is proposed to estimate PMA functions of the RBRDO formulation. Based on it, the above improved RBRDO problem can be transformed into a sequence of approximate deterministic sub-optimization problems, whose objective function and constraints are expressed as the approximate explicit form only in relation to the design variables. Furthermore, use the trust region method to solve the above sequence of sub-optimization. Lastly, several examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.