AI-based Reconstruction for Fast MRI -- A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Compressed sensing (CS) has been playing a key role in accelerating the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisition process. With the resurgence of artificial intelligence, deep neural networks and CS algorithms are being integrated to redefine the state of the art of fast MRI. The past several years have witnessed substantial growth in the complexity, diversity, and performance of deep learning-based CS techniques that are dedicated to fast MRI. In this meta-analysis, we systematically review the deep learning-based CS techniques for fast MRI, describe key model designs, highlight breakthroughs, and discuss promising directions. We have also introduced a comprehensive analysis framework and a classification system to assess the pivotal role of deep learning in CS-based acceleration for MRI.

Light-Field Microscopy for optical imaging of neuronal activity: when model-based methods meet data-driven approaches

Understanding how networks of neurons process information is one of the key challenges in modern neuroscience. A necessary step to achieve this goal is to be able to observe the dynamics of large populations of neurons over a large area of the brain. Light-field microscopy (LFM), a type of scanless microscope, is a particularly attractive candidate for high-speed three-dimensional (3D) imaging. It captures volumetric information in a single snapshot, allowing volumetric imaging at video frame-rates. Specific features of imaging neuronal activity using LFM call for the development of novel machine learning approaches that fully exploit priors embedded in physics and optics models. Signal processing theory and wave-optics theory could play a key role in filling this gap, and contribute to novel computational methods with enhanced interpretability and generalization by integrating model-driven and data-driven approaches. This paper is devoted to a comprehensive survey to state-of-the-art of computational methods for LFM, with a focus on model-based and data-driven approaches.

Privacy-Aware Communication Over the Wiretap Channel with Generative Networks

We study privacy-aware communication over a wiretap channel using end-to-end learning. Alice wants to transmit a source signal to Bob over a binary symmetric channel, while passive eavesdropper Eve tries to infer some sensitive attribute of Alice's source based on its overheard signal. Since we usually do not have access to true distributions, we propose a data-driven approach using variational autoencoder (VAE)-based joint source channel coding (JSCC). We show through simulations with the colored MNIST dataset that our approach provides high reconstruction quality at the receiver while confusing the eavesdropper about the latent sensitive attribute, which consists of the color and thickness of the digits. Finally, we consider a parallel-channel scenario, and show that our approach arranges the information transmission such that the channels with higher noise levels at the eavesdropper carry the sensitive information, while the non-sensitive information is transmitted over more vulnerable channels.

WINNet: Wavelet-inspired Invertible Network for Image Denoising

Image denoising aims to restore a clean image from an observed noisy image. The model-based image denoising approaches can achieve good generalization ability over different noise levels and are with high interpretability. Learning-based approaches are able to achieve better results, but usually with weaker generalization ability and interpretability. In this paper, we propose a wavelet-inspired invertible network (WINNet) to combine the merits of the wavelet-based approaches and learningbased approaches. The proposed WINNet consists of K-scale of lifting inspired invertible neural networks (LINNs) and sparsity-driven denoising networks together with a noise estimation network. The network architecture of LINNs is inspired by the lifting scheme in wavelets. LINNs are used to learn a non-linear redundant transform with perfect reconstruction property to facilitate noise removal. The denoising network implements a sparse coding process for denoising. The noise estimation network estimates the noise level from the input image which will be used to adaptively adjust the soft-thresholds in LINNs. The forward transform of LINNs produce a redundant multi-scale representation for denoising. The denoised image is reconstructed using the inverse transform of LINNs with the denoised detail channels and the original coarse channel. The simulation results show that the proposed WINNet method is highly interpretable and has strong generalization ability to unseen noise levels. It also achieves competitive results in the non-blind/blind image denoising and in image deblurring.

LINN: Lifting Inspired Invertible Neural Network for Image Denoising

In this paper, we propose an invertible neural network for image denoising (DnINN) inspired by the transform-based denoising framework. The proposed DnINN consists of an invertible neural network called LINN whose architecture is inspired by the lifting scheme in wavelet theory and a sparsity-driven denoising network which is used to remove noise from the transform coefficients. The denoising operation is performed with a single soft-thresholding operation or with a learned iterative shrinkage thresholding network. The forward pass of LINN produces an over-complete representation which is more suitable for denoising. The denoised image is reconstructed using the backward pass of LINN using the output of the denoising network. The simulation results show that the proposed DnINN method achieves results comparable to the DnCNN method while only requiring 1/4 of learnable parameters.

Model-inspired Deep Learning for Light-Field Microscopy with Application to Neuron Localization

Light-field microscopes are able to capture spatial and angular information of incident light rays. This allows reconstructing 3D locations of neurons from a single snap-shot.In this work, we propose a model-inspired deep learning approach to perform fast and robust 3D localization of sources using light-field microscopy images. This is achieved by developing a deep network that efficiently solves a convolutional sparse coding (CSC) problem to map Epipolar Plane Images (EPI) to corresponding sparse codes. The network architecture is designed systematically by unrolling the convolutional Iterative Shrinkage and Thresholding Algorithm (ISTA) while the network parameters are learned from a training dataset. Such principled design enables the deep network to leverage both domain knowledge implied in the model, as well as new parameters learned from the data, thereby combining advantages of model-based and learning-based methods. Practical experiments on localization of mammalian neurons from light-fields show that the proposed approach simultaneously provides enhanced performance, interpretability and efficiency.

Active Privacy-utility Trade-off Against a Hypothesis Testing Adversary

We consider a user releasing her data containing some personal information in return of a service. We model user's personal information as two correlated random variables, one of them, called the secret variable, is to be kept private, while the other, called the useful variable, is to be disclosed for utility. We consider active sequential data release, where at each time step the user chooses from among a finite set of release mechanisms, each revealing some information about the user's personal information, i.e., the true hypotheses, albeit with different statistics. The user manages data release in an online fashion such that maximum amount of information is revealed about the latent useful variable, while the confidence for the sensitive variable is kept below a predefined level. For the utility, we consider both the probability of correct detection of the useful variable and the mutual information (MI) between the useful variable and released data. We formulate both problems as a Markov decision process (MDP), and numerically solve them by advantage actor-critic (A2C) deep reinforcement learning (RL).

Privacy-Aware Time-Series Data Sharing with Deep Reinforcement Learning

Internet of things (IoT) devices are becoming increasingly popular thanks to many new services and applications they offer. However, in addition to their many benefits, they raise privacy concerns since they share fine-grained time-series user data with untrusted third parties. In this work, we study the privacy-utility trade-off (PUT) in time-series data sharing. Existing approaches to PUT mainly focus on a single data point; however, temporal correlations in time-series data introduce new challenges. Methods that preserve the privacy for the current time may leak significant amount of information at the trace level as the adversary can exploit temporal correlations in a trace. We consider sharing the distorted version of a user's true data sequence with an untrusted third party. We measure the privacy leakage by the mutual information between the user's true data sequence and shared version. We consider both instantaneous and average distortion between the two sequences, under a given distortion measure, as the utility loss metric. To tackle the history-dependent mutual information minimization, we reformulate the problem as a Markov decision process (MDP), and solve it using asynchronous actor-critic deep reinforcement learning (RL). We apply our optimal data release policies to location trace privacy scenario, and evaluate the performance of the proposed policy numerically.

Learning Deep Analysis Dictionaries -- Part II: Convolutional Dictionaries

In this paper, we introduce a Deep Convolutional Analysis Dictionary Model (DeepCAM) by learning convolutional dictionaries instead of unstructured dictionaries as in the case of deep analysis dictionary model introduced in the companion paper. Convolutional dictionaries are more suitable for processing high-dimensional signals like for example images and have only a small number of free parameters. By exploiting the properties of a convolutional dictionary, we present an efficient convolutional analysis dictionary learning approach. A L-layer DeepCAM consists of L layers of convolutional analysis dictionary and element-wise soft-thresholding pairs and a single layer of convolutional synthesis dictionary. Similar to DeepAM, each convolutional analysis dictionary is composed of a convolutional Information Preserving Analysis Dictionary (IPAD) and a convolutional Clustering Analysis Dictionary (CAD). The IPAD and the CAD are learned using variations of the proposed learning algorithm. We demonstrate that DeepCAM is an effective multilayer convolutional model and, on single image super-resolution, achieves performance comparable with other methods while also showing good generalization capabilities.

Learning Deep Analysis Dictionaries -- Part I: Unstructured Dictionaries

Inspired by the recent success of Deep Neural Networks and the recent efforts to develop multi-layer dictionary models, we propose a Deep Analysis dictionary Model (DeepAM) which is optimized to address a specific regression task known as single image super-resolution. Contrary to other multi-layer dictionary models, our architecture contains L layers of analysis dictionary and soft-thresholding operators to gradually extract high-level features and a layer of synthesis dictionary which is designed to optimize the regression task at hand. In our approach, each analysis dictionary is partitioned into two sub-dictionaries: an Information Preserving Analysis Dictionary (IPAD) and a Clustering Analysis Dictionary (CAD). The IPAD together with the corresponding soft-thresholds is designed to pass the key information from the previous layer to the next layer, while the CAD together with the corresponding soft-thresholding operator is designed to produce a sparse feature representation of its input data that facilitates discrimination of key features. Simulation results show that the proposed deep analysis dictionary model achieves comparable performance with a Deep Neural Network which has the same structure and is optimized using back-propagation.