ATR-Bench: A Federated Learning Benchmark for Adaptation, Trust, and Reasoning

Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a promising paradigm for collaborative model training while preserving data privacy across decentralized participants. As FL adoption grows, numerous techniques have been proposed to tackle its practical challenges. However, the lack of standardized evaluation across key dimensions hampers systematic progress and fair comparison of FL methods. In this work, we introduce ATR-Bench, a unified framework for analyzing federated learning through three foundational dimensions: Adaptation, Trust, and Reasoning. We provide an in-depth examination of the conceptual foundations, task formulations, and open research challenges associated with each theme. We have extensively benchmarked representative methods and datasets for adaptation to heterogeneous clients and trustworthiness in adversarial or unreliable environments. Due to the lack of reliable metrics and models for reasoning in FL, we only provide literature-driven insights for this dimension. ATR-Bench lays the groundwork for a systematic and holistic evaluation of federated learning with real-world relevance. We will make our complete codebase publicly accessible and a curated repository that continuously tracks new developments and research in the FL literature.

Oral Imaging for Malocclusion Issues Assessments: OMNI Dataset, Deep Learning Baselines and Benchmarking

Malocclusion is a major challenge in orthodontics, and its complex presentation and diverse clinical manifestations make accurate localization and diagnosis particularly important. Currently, one of the major shortcomings facing the field of dental image analysis is the lack of large-scale, accurately labeled datasets dedicated to malocclusion issues, which limits the development of automated diagnostics in the field of dentistry and leads to a lack of diagnostic accuracy and efficiency in clinical practice. Therefore, in this study, we propose the Oral and Maxillofacial Natural Images (OMNI) dataset, a novel and comprehensive dental image dataset aimed at advancing the study of analyzing dental images for issues of malocclusion. Specifically, the dataset contains 4166 multi-view images with 384 participants in data collection and annotated by professional dentists. In addition, we performed a comprehensive validation of the created OMNI dataset, including three CNN-based methods, two Transformer-based methods, and one GNN-based method, and conducted automated diagnostic experiments for malocclusion issues. The experimental results show that the OMNI dataset can facilitate the automated diagnosis research of malocclusion issues and provide a new benchmark for the research in this field. Our OMNI dataset and baseline code are publicly available at https://github.com/RoundFaceJ/OMNI.

Dual Prompting for Diverse Count-level PET Denoising

The to-be-denoised positron emission tomography (PET) volumes are inherent with diverse count levels, which imposes challenges for a unified model to tackle varied cases. In this work, we resort to the recently flourished prompt learning to achieve generalizable PET denoising with different count levels. Specifically, we propose dual prompts to guide the PET denoising in a divide-and-conquer manner, i.e., an explicitly count-level prompt to provide the specific prior information and an implicitly general denoising prompt to encode the essential PET denoising knowledge. Then, a novel prompt fusion module is developed to unify the heterogeneous prompts, followed by a prompt-feature interaction module to inject prompts into the features. The prompts are able to dynamically guide the noise-conditioned denoising process. Therefore, we are able to efficiently train a unified denoising model for various count levels, and deploy it to different cases with personalized prompts. We evaluated on 1940 low-count PET 3D volumes with uniformly randomly selected 13-22\% fractions of events from 97 $^{18}$F-MK6240 tau PET studies. It shows our dual prompting can largely improve the performance with informed count-level and outperform the count-conditional model.

Mixture-of-Shape-Experts (MoSE): End-to-End Shape Dictionary Framework to Prompt SAM for Generalizable Medical Segmentation

Single domain generalization (SDG) has recently attracted growing attention in medical image segmentation. One promising strategy for SDG is to leverage consistent semantic shape priors across different imaging protocols, scanner vendors, and clinical sites. However, existing dictionary learning methods that encode shape priors often suffer from limited representational power with a small set of offline computed shape elements, or overfitting when the dictionary size grows. Moreover, they are not readily compatible with large foundation models such as the Segment Anything Model (SAM). In this paper, we propose a novel Mixture-of-Shape-Experts (MoSE) framework that seamlessly integrates the idea of mixture-of-experts (MoE) training into dictionary learning to efficiently capture diverse and robust shape priors. Our method conceptualizes each dictionary atom as a shape expert, which specializes in encoding distinct semantic shape information. A gating network dynamically fuses these shape experts into a robust shape map, with sparse activation guided by SAM encoding to prevent overfitting. We further provide this shape map as a prompt to SAM, utilizing the powerful generalization capability of SAM through bidirectional integration. All modules, including the shape dictionary, are trained in an end-to-end manner. Extensive experiments on multiple public datasets demonstrate its effectiveness.

FM-LoRA: Factorized Low-Rank Meta-Prompting for Continual Learning

How to adapt a pre-trained model continuously for sequential tasks with different prediction class labels and domains and finally learn a generalizable model across diverse tasks is a long-lasting challenge. Continual learning (CL) has emerged as a promising approach to leverage pre-trained models (e.g., Transformers) for sequential tasks. While many existing CL methods incrementally store additional learned structures, such as Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) adapters or prompts and sometimes even preserve features from previous samples to maintain performance. This leads to unsustainable parameter growth and escalating storage costs as the number of tasks increases. Moreover, current approaches often lack task similarity awareness, which further hinders the models ability to effectively adapt to new tasks without interfering with previously acquired knowledge. To address these challenges, we propose FM-LoRA, a novel and efficient low-rank adaptation method that integrates both a dynamic rank selector (DRS) and dynamic meta-prompting (DMP). This framework allocates model capacity more effectively across tasks by leveraging a shared low-rank subspace critical for preserving knowledge, thereby avoiding continual parameter expansion. Extensive experiments on various CL benchmarks, including ImageNet-R, CIFAR100, and CUB200 for class-incremental learning (CIL), and DomainNet for domain-incremental learning (DIL), with Transformers backbone demonstrate that FM-LoRA effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting while delivering robust performance across a diverse range of tasks and domains.

A Speech-to-Video Synthesis Approach Using Spatio-Temporal Diffusion for Vocal Tract MRI

Understanding the relationship between vocal tract motion during speech and the resulting acoustic signal is crucial for aided clinical assessment and developing personalized treatment and rehabilitation strategies. Toward this goal, we introduce an audio-to-video generation framework for creating Real Time/cine-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (RT-/cine-MRI) visuals of the vocal tract from speech signals. Our framework first preprocesses RT-/cine-MRI sequences and speech samples to achieve temporal alignment, ensuring synchronization between visual and audio data. We then employ a modified stable diffusion model, integrating structural and temporal blocks, to effectively capture movement characteristics and temporal dynamics in the synchronized data. This process enables the generation of MRI sequences from new speech inputs, improving the conversion of audio into visual data. We evaluated our framework on healthy controls and tongue cancer patients by analyzing and comparing the vocal tract movements in synthesized videos. Our framework demonstrated adaptability to new speech inputs and effective generalization. In addition, positive human evaluations confirmed its effectiveness, with realistic and accurate visualizations, suggesting its potential for outpatient therapy and personalized simulation of vocal tract visualizations.

Identifying Trustworthiness Challenges in Deep Learning Models for Continental-Scale Water Quality Prediction

Water quality is foundational to environmental sustainability, ecosystem resilience, and public health. Deep learning models, particularly Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, offer transformative potential for large-scale water quality prediction and scientific insights generation. However, their widespread adoption in high-stakes decision-making, such as pollution mitigation and equitable resource allocation, is prevented by unresolved trustworthiness challenges including fairness, uncertainty, interpretability, robustness, generalizability, and reproducibility. In this work, we present the first comprehensive evaluation of trustworthiness in a continental-scale multi-task LSTM model predicting 20 water quality variables (encompassing physical/chemical processes, geochemical weathering, and nutrient cycling) across 482 U.S. basins. Our investigation uncovers systematic patterns of model performance disparities linked to basin characteristics, the inherent complexity of biogeochemical processes, and variable predictability, emphasizing critical performance fairness concerns. We further propose methodological frameworks for quantitatively evaluating critical aspects of trustworthiness, including uncertainty, interpretability, and robustness, identifying key limitations that could challenge reliable real-world deployment. This work serves as a timely call to action for advancing trustworthy data-driven methods for water resources management and provides a pathway to offering critical insights for researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners seeking to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly in environmental management.

Scientific Machine Learning of Flow Resistance Using Universal Shallow Water Equations with Differentiable Programming

Shallow water equations (SWEs) are the backbone of most hydrodynamics models for flood prediction, river engineering, and many other water resources applications. The estimation of flow resistance, i.e., the Manning's roughness coefficient $n$, is crucial for ensuring model accuracy, and has been previously determined using empirical formulas or tables. To better account for temporal and spatial variability in channel roughness, inverse modeling of $n$ using observed flow data is more reliable and adaptable; however, it is challenging when using traditional SWE solvers. Based on the concept of universal differential equation (UDE), which combines physics-based differential equations with neural networks (NNs), we developed a universal SWEs (USWEs) solver, Hydrograd, for hybrid hydrodynamics modeling. It can do accurate forward simulations, support automatic differentiation (AD) for gradient-based sensitivity analysis and parameter inversion, and perform scientific machine learning for physics discovery. In this work, we first validated the accuracy of its forward modeling, then applied a real-world case to demonstrate the ability of USWEs to capture model sensitivity (gradients) and perform inverse modeling of Manning's $n$. Furthermore, we used a NN to learn a universal relationship between $n$, hydraulic parameters, and flow in a real river channel. Unlike inverse modeling using surrogate models, Hydrograd uses a two-dimensional SWEs solver as its physics backbone, which eliminates the need for data-intensive pretraining and resolves the generalization problem when applied to out-of-sample scenarios. This differentiable modeling approach, with seamless integration with NNs, provides a new pathway for solving complex inverse problems and discovering new physics in hydrodynamics.

Three-Dimensional MRI Reconstruction with Gaussian Representations: Tackling the Undersampling Problem

Three-Dimensional Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has shown substantial promise in the field of computer vision, but remains unexplored in the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This study explores its potential for the reconstruction of isotropic resolution 3D MRI from undersampled k-space data. We introduce a novel framework termed 3D Gaussian MRI (3DGSMR), which employs 3D Gaussian distributions as an explicit representation for MR volumes. Experimental evaluations indicate that this method can effectively reconstruct voxelized MR images, achieving a quality on par with that of well-established 3D MRI reconstruction techniques found in the literature. Notably, the 3DGSMR scheme operates under a self-supervised framework, obviating the need for extensive training datasets or prior model training. This approach introduces significant innovations to the domain, notably the adaptation of 3DGS to MRI reconstruction and the novel application of the existing 3DGS methodology to decompose MR signals, which are presented in a complex-valued format.

GDM4MMIMO: Generative Diffusion Models for Massive MIMO Communications

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) offers significant advantages in spectral and energy efficiencies, positioning it as a cornerstone technology of fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication systems and a promising solution for the burgeoning data demands anticipated in sixth-generation (6G) networks. In recent years, with the continuous advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), a multitude of task-oriented generative foundation models (GFMs) have emerged, achieving remarkable performance in various fields such as computer vision (CV), natural language processing (NLP), and autonomous driving. As a pioneering force, these models are driving the paradigm shift in AI towards generative AI (GenAI). Among them, the generative diffusion model (GDM), as one of state-of-the-art families of generative models, demonstrates an exceptional capability to learn implicit prior knowledge and robust generalization capabilities, thereby enhancing its versatility and effectiveness across diverse applications. In this paper, we delve into the potential applications of GDM in massive MIMO communications. Specifically, we first provide an overview of massive MIMO communication, the framework of GFMs, and the working mechanism of GDM. Following this, we discuss recent research advancements in the field and present a case study of near-field channel estimation based on GDM, demonstrating its promising potential for facilitating efficient ultra-dimensional channel statement information (CSI) acquisition in the context of massive MIMO communications. Finally, we highlight several pressing challenges in future mobile communications and identify promising research directions surrounding GDM.