An Animation-based Augmentation Approach for Action Recognition from Discontinuous Video

The study of action recognition has attracted considerable attention recently due to its broad applications in multiple areas. However, with the issue of discontinuous training video, which not only decreases the performance of action recognition model, but complicates the data augmentation process as well, still remains under-exploration. In this study, we introduce the 4A (Action Animation-based Augmentation Approach), an innovative pipeline for data augmentation to address the problem. The main contributions remain in our work includes: (1) we investigate the problem of severe decrease on performance of action recognition task training by discontinuous video, and the limitation of existing augmentation methods on solving this problem. (2) we propose a novel augmentation pipeline, 4A, to address the problem of discontinuous video for training, while achieving a smoother and natural-looking action representation than the latest data augmentation methodology. (3) We achieve the same performance with only 10% of the original data for training as with all of the original data from the real-world dataset, and a better performance on In-the-wild videos, by employing our data augmentation techniques.

Respiratory motion forecasting with online learning of recurrent neural networks for safety enhancement in externally guided radiotherapy

In lung radiotherapy, infrared cameras can record the location of reflective objects on the chest to infer the position of the tumor moving due to breathing, but treatment system latencies hinder radiation beam precision. Real-time recurrent learning (RTRL), is a potential solution as it can learn patterns within non-stationary respiratory data but has high complexity. This study assesses the capabilities of resource-efficient online RNN algorithms, namely unbiased online recurrent optimization (UORO), sparse-1 step approximation (SnAp-1), and decoupled neural interfaces (DNI) to forecast respiratory motion during radiotherapy treatment accurately. We use time series containing the 3D position of external markers on the chest of healthy subjects. We propose efficient implementations for SnAp-1 and DNI based on compression of the influence and immediate Jacobian matrices and an accurate update of the linear coefficients used in credit assignment estimation, respectively. The original sampling frequency was 10Hz; we performed resampling at 3.33Hz and 30Hz. We use UORO, SnAp-1, and DNI to forecast each marker's 3D position with horizons (the time interval in advance for which the prediction is made) h<=2.1s and compare them with RTRL, least mean squares, and linear regression. RNNs trained online achieved similar or better accuracy than most previous works using larger training databases and deep learning, even though we used only the first minute of each sequence to predict motion within that exact sequence. SnAp-1 had the lowest normalized root mean square errors (nRMSE) averaged over the horizon values considered, equal to 0.335 and 0.157, at 3.33Hz and 10.0Hz, respectively. Similarly, UORO had the highest accuracy at 30Hz, with an nRMSE of 0.0897. DNI's inference time, equal to 6.8ms per time step at 30Hz (Intel Core i7-13700 CPU), was the lowest among the RNN methods examined.

GTAutoAct: An Automatic Datasets Generation Framework Based on Game Engine Redevelopment for Action Recognition

Current datasets for action recognition tasks face limitations stemming from traditional collection and generation methods, including the constrained range of action classes, absence of multi-viewpoint recordings, limited diversity, poor video quality, and labor-intensive manually collection. To address these challenges, we introduce GTAutoAct, a innovative dataset generation framework leveraging game engine technology to facilitate advancements in action recognition. GTAutoAct excels in automatically creating large-scale, well-annotated datasets with extensive action classes and superior video quality. Our framework's distinctive contributions encompass: (1) it innovatively transforms readily available coordinate-based 3D human motion into rotation-orientated representation with enhanced suitability in multiple viewpoints; (2) it employs dynamic segmentation and interpolation of rotation sequences to create smooth and realistic animations of action; (3) it offers extensively customizable animation scenes; (4) it implements an autonomous video capture and processing pipeline, featuring a randomly navigating camera, with auto-trimming and labeling functionalities. Experimental results underscore the framework's robustness and highlights its potential to significantly improve action recognition model training.

Prediction of the motion of chest internal points using a recurrent neural network trained with real-time recurrent learning for latency compensation in lung cancer radiotherapy

During the radiotherapy treatment of patients with lung cancer, the radiation delivered to healthy tissue around the tumor needs to be minimized, which is difficult because of respiratory motion and the latency of linear accelerator systems. In the proposed study, we first use the Lucas-Kanade pyramidal optical flow algorithm to perform deformable image registration of chest computed tomography scan images of four patients with lung cancer. We then track three internal points close to the lung tumor based on the previously computed deformation field and predict their position with a recurrent neural network (RNN) trained using real-time recurrent learning (RTRL) and gradient clipping. The breathing data is quite regular, sampled at approximately 2.5Hz, and includes artificial drift in the spine direction. The amplitude of the motion of the tracked points ranged from 12.0mm to 22.7mm. Finally, we propose a simple method for recovering and predicting 3D tumor images from the tracked points and the initial tumor image based on a linear correspondence model and Nadaraya-Watson non-linear regression. The root-mean-square error, maximum error, and jitter corresponding to the RNN prediction on the test set were smaller than the same performance measures obtained with linear prediction and least mean squares (LMS). In particular, the maximum prediction error associated with the RNN, equal to 1.51mm, is respectively 16.1% and 5.0% lower than the maximum error associated with linear prediction and LMS. The average prediction time per time step with RTRL is equal to 119ms, which is less than the 400ms marker position sampling time. The tumor position in the predicted images appears visually correct, which is confirmed by the high mean cross-correlation between the original and predicted images, equal to 0.955.

Cross-Task Consistency Learning Framework for Multi-Task Learning

Multi-task learning (MTL) is an active field in deep learning in which we train a model to jointly learn multiple tasks by exploiting relationships between the tasks. It has been shown that MTL helps the model share the learned features between tasks and enhance predictions compared to when learning each task independently. We propose a new learning framework for 2-task MTL problem that uses the predictions of one task as inputs to another network to predict the other task. We define two new loss terms inspired by cycle-consistency loss and contrastive learning, alignment loss and cross-task consistency loss. Both losses are designed to enforce the model to align the predictions of multiple tasks so that the model predicts consistently. We theoretically prove that both losses help the model learn more efficiently and that cross-task consistency loss is better in terms of alignment with the straight-forward predictions. Experimental results also show that our proposed model achieves significant performance on the benchmark Cityscapes and NYU dataset.

Prediction of the Position of External Markers Using a Recurrent Neural Network Trained With Unbiased Online Recurrent Optimization for Safe Lung Cancer Radiotherapy

During lung cancer radiotherapy, the position of infrared reflective objects on the chest can be recorded to estimate the tumor location. However, radiotherapy systems usually have a latency inherent to robot control limitations that impedes the radiation delivery precision. Not taking this phenomenon into account may cause unwanted damage to healthy tissues and lead to side effects such as radiation pneumonitis. In this research, we use nine observation records of the three-dimensional position of three external markers on the chest and abdomen of healthy individuals breathing during intervals from 73s to 222s. The sampling frequency is equal to 10Hz and the amplitudes of the recorded trajectories range from 6mm to 40mm in the superior-inferior direction. We forecast the location of each marker simultaneously with a horizon value (the time interval in advance for which the prediction is made) between 0.1s and 2.0s, using a recurrent neural network (RNN) trained with unbiased online recurrent optimization (UORO). We compare its performance with an RNN trained with real-time recurrent learning, least mean squares (LMS), and offline linear regression. Training and cross-validation are performed during the first minute of each sequence. On average, UORO achieves the lowest root-mean-square (RMS) and maximum error, equal respectively to 1.3mm and 8.8mm, with a prediction time per time step lower than 2.8ms (Dell Intel core i9-9900K 3.60Ghz). Linear regression has the lowest RMS error for the horizon values 0.1s and 0.2s, followed by LMS for horizon values between 0.3s and 0.5s, and UORO for horizon values greater than 0.6s.