Revisiting Weighted Strategy for Non-stationary Parametric Bandits

Non-stationary parametric bandits have attracted much attention recently. There are three principled ways to deal with non-stationarity, including sliding-window, weighted, and restart strategies. As many non-stationary environments exhibit gradual drifting patterns, the weighted strategy is commonly adopted in real-world applications. However, previous theoretical studies show that its analysis is more involved and the algorithms are either computationally less efficient or statistically suboptimal. This paper revisits the weighted strategy for non-stationary parametric bandits. In linear bandits (LB), we discover that this undesirable feature is due to an inadequate regret analysis, which results in an overly complex algorithm design. We propose a refined analysis framework, which simplifies the derivation and importantly produces a simpler weight-based algorithm that is as efficient as window/restart-based algorithms while retaining the same regret as previous studies. Furthermore, our new framework can be used to improve regret bounds of other parametric bandits, including Generalized Linear Bandits (GLB) and Self-Concordant Bandits (SCB). For example, we develop a simple weighted GLB algorithm with an $\widetilde{O}(k_\mu^{\frac{5}{4}} c_\mu^{-\frac{3}{4}} d^{\frac{3}{4}} P_T^{\frac{1}{4}}T^{\frac{3}{4}})$ regret, improving the $\widetilde{O}(k_\mu^{2} c_\mu^{-1}d^{\frac{9}{10}} P_T^{\frac{1}{5}}T^{\frac{4}{5}})$ bound in prior work, where $k_\mu$ and $c_\mu$ characterize the reward model's nonlinearity, $P_T$ measures the non-stationarity, $d$ and $T$ denote the dimension and time horizon.

Differentiable Arbitrating in Zero-sum Markov Games

We initiate the study of how to perturb the reward in a zero-sum Markov game with two players to induce a desirable Nash equilibrium, namely arbitrating. Such a problem admits a bi-level optimization formulation. The lower level requires solving the Nash equilibrium under a given reward function, which makes the overall problem challenging to optimize in an end-to-end way. We propose a backpropagation scheme that differentiates through the Nash equilibrium, which provides the gradient feedback for the upper level. In particular, our method only requires a black-box solver for the (regularized) Nash equilibrium (NE). We develop the convergence analysis for the proposed framework with proper black-box NE solvers and demonstrate the empirical successes in two multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) environments.

Joint Beamforming and PD Orientation Design for Mobile Visible Light Communications

In this paper, we propose joint beamforming and photo-detector (PD) orientation (BO) optimization schemes for mobile visible light communication (VLC) with the orientation adjustable receiver (OAR). Since VLC is sensitive to line-of-sight propagation, we first establish the OAR model and the human body blockage model for mobile VLC user equipment (UE). To guarantee the quality of service (QoS) of mobile VLC, we jointly optimize BO with minimal UE the power consumption for both fixed and random UE orientation cases. For the fixed UE orientation case, since the {transmit} beamforming and the PD orientation are mutually coupled, the joint BO optimization problem is nonconvex and intractable. To address this challenge, we propose an alternating optimization algorithm to obtain the transmit beamforming and the PD orientation. For the random UE orientation case, we further propose a robust alternating BO optimization algorithm to ensure the worst-case QoS requirement of the mobile UE. Finally, the performance of joint BO optimization design schemes are evaluated for mobile VLC through numerical experiments.

MF2-MVQA: A Multi-stage Feature Fusion method for Medical Visual Question Answering

There is a key problem in the medical visual question answering task that how to effectively realize the feature fusion of language and medical images with limited datasets. In order to better utilize multi-scale information of medical images, previous methods directly embed the multi-stage visual feature maps as tokens of same size respectively and fuse them with text representation. However, this will cause the confusion of visual features at different stages. To this end, we propose a simple but powerful multi-stage feature fusion method, MF2-MVQA, which stage-wise fuses multi-level visual features with textual semantics. MF2-MVQA achieves the State-Of-The-Art performance on VQA-Med 2019 and VQA-RAD dataset. The results of visualization also verify that our model outperforms previous work.

Modified EDAS Method Based on Cumulative Prospect Theory for Multiple Attributes Group Decision Making with Interval-valued Intuitionistic Fuzzy Information

The Interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IVIFSs) based on the intuitionistic fuzzy sets combines the classical decision method is in its research and application is attracting attention. After comparative analysis, there are multiple classical methods with IVIFSs information have been applied into many practical issues. In this paper, we extended the classical EDAS method based on cumulative prospect theory (CPT) considering the decision makers (DMs) psychological factor under IVIFSs. Taking the fuzzy and uncertain character of the IVIFSs and the psychological preference into consideration, the original EDAS method based on the CPT under IVIFSs (IVIF-CPT-MABAC) method is built for MAGDM issues. Meanwhile, information entropy method is used to evaluate the attribute weight. Finally, a numerical example for project selection of green technology venture capital has been given and some comparisons is used to illustrate advantages of IVIF-CPT-MABAC method and some comparison analysis and sensitivity analysis are applied to prove this new methods effectiveness and stability.

Uncertainty estimations methods for a deep learning model to aid in clinical decision-making -- a clinician's perspective

Prediction uncertainty estimation has clinical significance as it can potentially quantify prediction reliability. Clinicians may trust 'blackbox' models more if robust reliability information is available, which may lead to more models being adopted into clinical practice. There are several deep learning-inspired uncertainty estimation techniques, but few are implemented on medical datasets -- fewer on single institutional datasets/models. We sought to compare dropout variational inference (DO), test-time augmentation (TTA), conformal predictions, and single deterministic methods for estimating uncertainty using our model trained to predict feeding tube placement for 271 head and neck cancer patients treated with radiation. We compared the area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) trends for each method at various cutoffs that sought to stratify patients into 'certain' and 'uncertain' cohorts. These cutoffs were obtained by calculating the percentile "uncertainty" within the validation cohort and applied to the testing cohort. Broadly, the AUC, sensitivity, and NPV increased as the predictions were more 'certain' -- i.e., lower uncertainty estimates. However, when a majority vote (implementing 2/3 criteria: DO, TTA, conformal predictions) or a stricter approach (3/3 criteria) were used, AUC, sensitivity, and NPV improved without a notable loss in specificity or PPV. Especially for smaller, single institutional datasets, it may be important to evaluate multiple estimations techniques before incorporating a model into clinical practice.

Recurrence-free Survival Prediction under the Guidance of Automatic Gross Tumor Volume Segmentation for Head and Neck Cancers

For Head and Neck Cancers (HNC) patient management, automatic gross tumor volume (GTV) segmentation and accurate pre-treatment cancer recurrence prediction are of great importance to assist physicians in designing personalized management plans, which have the potential to improve the treatment outcome and quality of life for HNC patients. In this paper, we developed an automated primary tumor (GTVp) and lymph nodes (GTVn) segmentation method based on combined pre-treatment positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scans of HNC patients. We extracted radiomics features from the segmented tumor volume and constructed a multi-modality tumor recurrence-free survival (RFS) prediction model, which fused the prediction results from separate CT radiomics, PET radiomics, and clinical models. We performed 5-fold cross-validation to train and evaluate our methods on the MICCAI 2022 HEad and neCK TumOR segmentation and outcome prediction challenge (HECKTOR) dataset. The ensemble prediction results on the testing cohort achieved Dice scores of 0.77 and 0.73 for GTVp and GTVn segmentation, respectively, and a C-index value of 0.67 for RFS prediction. The code is publicly available (https://github.com/wangkaiwan/HECKTOR-2022-AIRT). Our team's name is AIRT.

Towards reliable head and neck cancers locoregional recurrence prediction using delta-radiomics and learning with rejection option

A reliable locoregional recurrence (LRR) prediction model is important for the personalized management of head and neck cancers (HNC) patients. This work aims to develop a delta-radiomics feature-based multi-classifier, multi-objective, and multi-modality (Delta-mCOM) model for post-treatment HNC LRR prediction and adopting a learning with rejection option (LRO) strategy to boost the prediction reliability by rejecting samples with high prediction uncertainties. In this retrospective study, we collected PET/CT image and clinical data from 224 HNC patients. We calculated the differences between radiomics features extracted from PET/CT images acquired before and after radiotherapy as the input features. Using clinical parameters, PET and CT radiomics features, we built and optimized three separate single-modality models. We used multiple classifiers for model construction and employed sensitivity and specificity simultaneously as the training objectives. For testing samples, we fused the output probabilities from all these single-modality models to obtain the final output probabilities of the Delta-mCOM model. In the LRO strategy, we estimated the epistemic and aleatoric uncertainties when predicting with Delta-mCOM model and identified patients associated with prediction of higher reliability. Predictions with higher epistemic uncertainty or higher aleatoric uncertainty than given thresholds were deemed unreliable, and they were rejected before providing a final prediction. Different thresholds corresponding to different low-reliability prediction rejection ratios were applied. The inclusion of the delta-radiomics feature improved the accuracy of HNC LRR prediction, and the proposed Delta-mCOM model can give more reliable predictions by rejecting predictions for samples of high uncertainty using the LRO strategy.

A Constrained Deformable Convolutional Network for Efficient Single Image Dynamic Scene Blind Deblurring with Spatially-Variant Motion Blur Kernels Estimation

Most existing deep-learning-based single image dynamic scene blind deblurring (SIDSBD) methods usually design deep networks to directly remove the spatially-variant motion blurs from one inputted motion blurred image, without blur kernels estimation. In this paper, inspired by the Projective Motion Path Blur (PMPB) model and deformable convolution, we propose a novel constrained deformable convolutional network (CDCN) for efficient single image dynamic scene blind deblurring, which simultaneously achieves accurate spatially-variant motion blur kernels estimation and the high-quality image restoration from only one observed motion blurred image. In our proposed CDCN, we first construct a novel multi-scale multi-level multi-input multi-output (MSML-MIMO) encoder-decoder architecture for more powerful features extraction ability. Second, different from the DLVBD methods that use multiple consecutive frames, a novel constrained deformable convolution reblurring (CDCR) strategy is proposed, in which the deformable convolution is first applied to blurred features of the inputted single motion blurred image for learning the sampling points of motion blur kernel of each pixel, which is similar to the estimation of the motion density function of the camera shake in the PMPB model, and then a novel PMPB-based reblurring loss function is proposed to constrain the learned sampling points convergence, which can make the learned sampling points match with the relative motion trajectory of each pixel better and promote the accuracy of the spatially-variant motion blur kernels estimation.

Content-oriented learned image compression

In recent years, with the development of deep neural networks, end-to-end optimized image compression has made significant progress and exceeded the classic methods in terms of rate-distortion performance. However, most learning-based image compression methods are unlabeled and do not consider image semantics or content when optimizing the model. In fact, human eyes have different sensitivities to different content, so the image content also needs to be considered. In this paper, we propose a content-oriented image compression method, which handles different kinds of image contents with different strategies. Extensive experiments show that the proposed method achieves competitive subjective results compared with state-of-the-art end-to-end learned image compression methods or classic methods.