CasCast: Skillful High-resolution Precipitation Nowcasting via Cascaded Modelling

Precipitation nowcasting based on radar data plays a crucial role in extreme weather prediction and has broad implications for disaster management. Despite progresses have been made based on deep learning, two key challenges of precipitation nowcasting are not well-solved: (i) the modeling of complex precipitation system evolutions with different scales, and (ii) accurate forecasts for extreme precipitation. In this work, we propose CasCast, a cascaded framework composed of a deterministic and a probabilistic part to decouple the predictions for mesoscale precipitation distributions and small-scale patterns. Then, we explore training the cascaded framework at the high resolution and conducting the probabilistic modeling in a low dimensional latent space with a frame-wise-guided diffusion transformer for enhancing the optimization of extreme events while reducing computational costs. Extensive experiments on three benchmark radar precipitation datasets show that CasCast achieves competitive performance. Especially, CasCast significantly surpasses the baseline (up to +91.8%) for regional extreme-precipitation nowcasting.

Poisson Process for Bayesian Optimization

BayesianOptimization(BO) is a sample-efficient black-box optimizer, and extensive methods have been proposed to build the absolute function response of the black-box function through a probabilistic surrogate model, including Tree-structured Parzen Estimator (TPE), random forest (SMAC), and Gaussian process (GP). However, few methods have been explored to estimate the relative rankings of candidates, which can be more robust to noise and have better practicality than absolute function responses, especially when the function responses are intractable but preferences can be acquired. To this end, we propose a novel ranking-based surrogate model based on the Poisson process and introduce an efficient BO framework, namely Poisson Process Bayesian Optimization (PoPBO). Two tailored acquisition functions are further derived from classic LCB and EI to accommodate it. Compared to the classic GP-BO method, our PoPBO has lower computation costs and better robustness to noise, which is verified by abundant experiments. The results on both simulated and real-world benchmarks, including hyperparameter optimization (HPO) and neural architecture search (NAS), show the effectiveness of PoPBO.

Few-Shot Class-Incremental Learning with Prior Knowledge

To tackle the issues of catastrophic forgetting and overfitting in few-shot class-incremental learning (FSCIL), previous work has primarily concentrated on preserving the memory of old knowledge during the incremental phase. The role of pre-trained model in shaping the effectiveness of incremental learning is frequently underestimated in these studies. Therefore, to enhance the generalization ability of the pre-trained model, we propose Learning with Prior Knowledge (LwPK) by introducing nearly free prior knowledge from a few unlabeled data of subsequent incremental classes. We cluster unlabeled incremental class samples to produce pseudo-labels, then jointly train these with labeled base class samples, effectively allocating embedding space for both old and new class data. Experimental results indicate that LwPK effectively enhances the model resilience against catastrophic forgetting, with theoretical analysis based on empirical risk minimization and class distance measurement corroborating its operational principles. The source code of LwPK is publicly available at: \url{https://github.com/StevenJ308/LwPK}.

Vision-Informed Flow Image Super-Resolution with Quaternion Spatial Modeling and Dynamic Flow Convolution

Flow image super-resolution (FISR) aims at recovering high-resolution turbulent velocity fields from low-resolution flow images. Existing FISR methods mainly process the flow images in natural image patterns, while the critical and distinct flow visual properties are rarely considered. This negligence would cause the significant domain gap between flow and natural images to severely hamper the accurate perception of flow turbulence, thereby undermining super-resolution performance. To tackle this dilemma, we comprehensively consider the flow visual properties, including the unique flow imaging principle and morphological information, and propose the first flow visual property-informed FISR algorithm. Particularly, different from natural images that are constructed by independent RGB channels in the light field, flow images build on the orthogonal UVW velocities in the flow field. To empower the FISR network with an awareness of the flow imaging principle, we propose quaternion spatial modeling to model this orthogonal spatial relationship for improved FISR. Moreover, due to viscosity and surface tension characteristics, fluids often exhibit a droplet-like morphology in flow images. Inspired by this morphological property, we design the dynamic flow convolution to effectively mine the morphological information to enhance FISR. Extensive experiments on the newly acquired flow image datasets demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance of our method. Code and data will be made available.

Uncertainty-aware Sampling for Long-tailed Semi-supervised Learning

For semi-supervised learning with imbalance classes, the long-tailed distribution of data will increase the model prediction bias toward dominant classes, undermining performance on less frequent classes. Existing methods also face challenges in ensuring the selection of sufficiently reliable pseudo-labels for model training and there is a lack of mechanisms to adjust the selection of more reliable pseudo-labels based on different training stages. To mitigate this issue, we introduce uncertainty into the modeling process for pseudo-label sampling, taking into account that the model performance on the tailed classes varies over different training stages. For example, at the early stage of model training, the limited predictive accuracy of model results in a higher rate of uncertain pseudo-labels. To counter this, we propose an Uncertainty-Aware Dynamic Threshold Selection (UDTS) approach. This approach allows the model to perceive the uncertainty of pseudo-labels at different training stages, thereby adaptively adjusting the selection thresholds for different classes. Compared to other methods such as the baseline method FixMatch, UDTS achieves an increase in accuracy of at least approximately 5.26%, 1.75%, 9.96%, and 1.28% on the natural scene image datasets CIFAR10-LT, CIFAR100-LT, STL-10-LT, and the medical image dataset TissueMNIST, respectively. The source code of UDTS is publicly available at: https://github.com/yangk/UDTS.

Inter-X: Towards Versatile Human-Human Interaction Analysis

The analysis of the ubiquitous human-human interactions is pivotal for understanding humans as social beings. Existing human-human interaction datasets typically suffer from inaccurate body motions, lack of hand gestures and fine-grained textual descriptions. To better perceive and generate human-human interactions, we propose Inter-X, a currently largest human-human interaction dataset with accurate body movements and diverse interaction patterns, together with detailed hand gestures. The dataset includes ~11K interaction sequences and more than 8.1M frames. We also equip Inter-X with versatile annotations of more than 34K fine-grained human part-level textual descriptions, semantic interaction categories, interaction order, and the relationship and personality of the subjects. Based on the elaborate annotations, we propose a unified benchmark composed of 4 categories of downstream tasks from both the perceptual and generative directions. Extensive experiments and comprehensive analysis show that Inter-X serves as a testbed for promoting the development of versatile human-human interaction analysis. Our dataset and benchmark will be publicly available for research purposes.

Efficient Deformable Tissue Reconstruction via Orthogonal Neural Plane

Intraoperative imaging techniques for reconstructing deformable tissues in vivo are pivotal for advanced surgical systems. Existing methods either compromise on rendering quality or are excessively computationally intensive, often demanding dozens of hours to perform, which significantly hinders their practical application. In this paper, we introduce Fast Orthogonal Plane (Forplane), a novel, efficient framework based on neural radiance fields (NeRF) for the reconstruction of deformable tissues. We conceptualize surgical procedures as 4D volumes, and break them down into static and dynamic fields comprised of orthogonal neural planes. This factorization iscretizes the four-dimensional space, leading to a decreased memory usage and faster optimization. A spatiotemporal importance sampling scheme is introduced to improve performance in regions with tool occlusion as well as large motions and accelerate training. An efficient ray marching method is applied to skip sampling among empty regions, significantly improving inference speed. Forplane accommodates both binocular and monocular endoscopy videos, demonstrating its extensive applicability and flexibility. Our experiments, carried out on two in vivo datasets, the EndoNeRF and Hamlyn datasets, demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework. In all cases, Forplane substantially accelerates both the optimization process (by over 100 times) and the inference process (by over 15 times) while maintaining or even improving the quality across a variety of non-rigid deformations. This significant performance improvement promises to be a valuable asset for future intraoperative surgical applications. The code of our project is now available at https://github.com/Loping151/ForPlane.

VidToMe: Video Token Merging for Zero-Shot Video Editing

Diffusion models have made significant advances in generating high-quality images, but their application to video generation has remained challenging due to the complexity of temporal motion. Zero-shot video editing offers a solution by utilizing pre-trained image diffusion models to translate source videos into new ones. Nevertheless, existing methods struggle to maintain strict temporal consistency and efficient memory consumption. In this work, we propose a novel approach to enhance temporal consistency in generated videos by merging self-attention tokens across frames. By aligning and compressing temporally redundant tokens across frames, our method improves temporal coherence and reduces memory consumption in self-attention computations. The merging strategy matches and aligns tokens according to the temporal correspondence between frames, facilitating natural temporal consistency in generated video frames. To manage the complexity of video processing, we divide videos into chunks and develop intra-chunk local token merging and inter-chunk global token merging, ensuring both short-term video continuity and long-term content consistency. Our video editing approach seamlessly extends the advancements in image editing to video editing, rendering favorable results in temporal consistency over state-of-the-art methods.

Partial Label Learning with a Partner

In partial label learning (PLL), each instance is associated with a set of candidate labels among which only one is ground-truth. The majority of the existing works focuses on constructing robust classifiers to estimate the labeling confidence of candidate labels in order to identify the correct one. However, these methods usually struggle to rectify mislabeled samples. To help existing PLL methods identify and rectify mislabeled samples, in this paper, we introduce a novel partner classifier and propose a novel ``mutual supervision'' paradigm. Specifically, we instantiate the partner classifier predicated on the implicit fact that non-candidate labels of a sample should not be assigned to it, which is inherently accurate and has not been fully investigated in PLL. Furthermore, a novel collaborative term is formulated to link the base classifier and the partner one. During each stage of mutual supervision, both classifiers will blur each other's predictions through a blurring mechanism to prevent overconfidence in a specific label. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the performance and disambiguation ability of several well-established stand-alone and deep-learning based PLL approaches can be significantly improved by coupling with this learning paradigm.

Domain Prompt Learning with Quaternion Networks

Prompt learning has emerged as an effective and data-efficient technique in large Vision-Language Models (VLMs). However, when adapting VLMs to specialized domains such as remote sensing and medical imaging, domain prompt learning remains underexplored. While large-scale domain-specific foundation models can help tackle this challenge, their concentration on a single vision level makes it challenging to prompt both vision and language modalities. To overcome this, we propose to leverage domain-specific knowledge from domain-specific foundation models to transfer the robust recognition ability of VLMs from generalized to specialized domains, using quaternion networks. Specifically, the proposed method involves using domain-specific vision features from domain-specific foundation models to guide the transformation of generalized contextual embeddings from the language branch into a specialized space within the quaternion networks. Moreover, we present a hierarchical approach that generates vision prompt features by analyzing intermodal relationships between hierarchical language prompt features and domain-specific vision features. In this way, quaternion networks can effectively mine the intermodal relationships in the specific domain, facilitating domain-specific vision-language contrastive learning. Extensive experiments on domain-specific datasets show that our proposed method achieves new state-of-the-art results in prompt learning.