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72 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2013

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Puppet Flow

Zuffi, S., Black, M. J.

(7), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2013 (techreport)

Abstract
We introduce Puppet Flow (PF), a layered model describing the optical flow of a person in a video sequence. We consider video frames composed by two layers: a foreground layer corresponding to a person, and background. We model the background as an affine flow field. The foreground layer, being a moving person, requires reasoning about the articulated nature of the human body. We thus represent the foreground layer with the Deformable Structures model (DS), a parametrized 2D part-based human body representation. We call the motion field defined through articulated motion and deformation of the DS model, a Puppet Flow. By exploiting the DS representation, Puppet Flow is a parametrized optical flow field, where parameters are the person's pose, gender and body shape.

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pdf Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

2013

ps Zuffi, S., Black, M. J. Puppet Flow (7), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, October 2013 (techreport)

pdf Project Page Project Page [BibTex]

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Studying large-scale brain networks: electrical stimulation and neural-event-triggered fMRI

Logothetis, N., Eschenko, O., Murayama, Y., Augath, M., Steudel, T., Evrard, H., Besserve, M., Oeltermann, A.

Twenty-Second Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2013), July 2013, journal = {BMC Neuroscience}, year = {2013}, month = {7}, volume = {14}, number = {Supplement 1}, pages = {A1}, (talk)

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Logothetis, N., Eschenko, O., Murayama, Y., Augath, M., Steudel, T., Evrard, H., Besserve, M., Oeltermann, A. Studying large-scale brain networks: electrical stimulation and neural-event-triggered fMRI Twenty-Second Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2013), July 2013, journal = {BMC Neuroscience}, year = {2013}, month = {7}, volume = {14}, number = {Supplement 1}, pages = {A1}, (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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Learning and Optimization with Submodular Functions

Sankaran, B., Ghazvininejad, M., He, X., Kale, D., Cohen, L.

ArXiv, May 2013 (techreport)

Abstract
In many naturally occurring optimization problems one needs to ensure that the definition of the optimization problem lends itself to solutions that are tractable to compute. In cases where exact solutions cannot be computed tractably, it is beneficial to have strong guarantees on the tractable approximate solutions. In order operate under these criterion most optimization problems are cast under the umbrella of convexity or submodularity. In this report we will study design and optimization over a common class of functions called submodular functions. Set functions, and specifically submodular set functions, characterize a wide variety of naturally occurring optimization problems, and the property of submodularity of set functions has deep theoretical consequences with wide ranging applications. Informally, the property of submodularity of set functions concerns the intuitive principle of diminishing returns. This property states that adding an element to a smaller set has more value than adding it to a larger set. Common examples of submodular monotone functions are entropies, concave functions of cardinality, and matroid rank functions; non-monotone examples include graph cuts, network flows, and mutual information. In this paper we will review the formal definition of submodularity; the optimization of submodular functions, both maximization and minimization; and finally discuss some applications in relation to learning and reasoning using submodular functions.

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arxiv link (url) [BibTex]

am Sankaran, B., Ghazvininejad, M., He, X., Kale, D., Cohen, L. Learning and Optimization with Submodular Functions ArXiv, May 2013 (techreport)

arxiv link (url) [BibTex]

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A Quantitative Analysis of Current Practices in Optical Flow Estimation and the Principles Behind Them

Sun, D., Roth, S., Black, M. J.

(CS-10-03), Brown University, Department of Computer Science, January 2013 (techreport)

ps

pdf [BibTex]

ps Sun, D., Roth, S., Black, M. J. A Quantitative Analysis of Current Practices in Optical Flow Estimation and the Principles Behind Them (CS-10-03), Brown University, Department of Computer Science, January 2013 (techreport)

pdf [BibTex]

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Animating Samples from Gaussian Distributions

Hennig, P.

(8), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany, 2013 (techreport)

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PDF [BibTex]

ei pn Hennig, P. Animating Samples from Gaussian Distributions (8), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany, 2013 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation

Muandet, K.

30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (talk)

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Muandet, K. Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (talk)

PDF [BibTex]

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Maximizing Kepler science return per telemetered pixel: Detailed models of the focal plane in the two-wheel era

Hogg, D. W., Angus, R., Barclay, T., Dawson, R., Fergus, R., Foreman-Mackey, D., Harmeling, S., Hirsch, M., Lang, D., Montet, B. T., Schiminovich, D., Schölkopf, B.

arXiv:1309.0653, 2013 (techreport)

ei

link (url) [BibTex]

ei Hogg, D. W., Angus, R., Barclay, T., Dawson, R., Fergus, R., Foreman-Mackey, D., Harmeling, S., Hirsch, M., Lang, D., Montet, B. T., Schiminovich, D., Schölkopf, B. Maximizing Kepler science return per telemetered pixel: Detailed models of the focal plane in the two-wheel era arXiv:1309.0653, 2013 (techreport)

link (url) [BibTex]

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Maximizing Kepler science return per telemetered pixel: Searching the habitable zones of the brightest stars

Montet, B. T., Angus, R., Barclay, T., Dawson, R., Fergus, R., Foreman-Mackey, D., Harmeling, S., Hirsch, M., Hogg, D. W., Lang, D., Schiminovich, D., Schölkopf, B.

arXiv:1309.0654, 2013 (techreport)

ei

link (url) [BibTex]

ei Montet, B. T., Angus, R., Barclay, T., Dawson, R., Fergus, R., Foreman-Mackey, D., Harmeling, S., Hirsch, M., Hogg, D. W., Lang, D., Schiminovich, D., Schölkopf, B. Maximizing Kepler science return per telemetered pixel: Searching the habitable zones of the brightest stars arXiv:1309.0654, 2013 (techreport)

link (url) [BibTex]

2007

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Reaction graph kernels for discovering missing enzymes in the plant secondary metabolism

Saigo, H., Hattori, M., Tsuda, K.

NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

Abstract
Secondary metabolic pathway in plant is important for finding druggable candidate enzymes. However, there are many enzymes whose functions are still undiscovered especially in organism-specific metabolic pathways. We propose reaction graph kernels for automatically assigning the EC numbers to unknown enzymatic reactions in a metabolic network. Experiments are carried out on KEGG/REACTION database and our method successfully predicted the first three digits of the EC number with 83% accuracy.We also exhaustively predicted missing enzymatic functions in the plant secondary metabolism pathways, and evaluated our results in biochemical validity.

ei

Web [BibTex]

2007

ei Saigo, H., Hattori, M., Tsuda, K. Reaction graph kernels for discovering missing enzymes in the plant secondary metabolism NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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Positional Oligomer Importance Matrices

Sonnenburg, S., Zien, A., Philips, P., Rätsch, G.

NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

Abstract
At the heart of many important bioinformatics problems, such as gene finding and function prediction, is the classification of biological sequences, above all of DNA and proteins. In many cases, the most accurate classifiers are obtained by training SVMs with complex sequence kernels, for instance for transcription starts or splice sites. However, an often criticized downside of SVMs with complex kernels is that it is very hard for humans to understand the learned decision rules and to derive biological insights from them. To close this gap, we introduce the concept of positional oligomer importance matrices (POIMs) and develop an efficient algorithm for their computation. We demonstrate how they overcome the limitations of sequence logos, and how they can be used to find relevant motifs for different biological phenomena in a straight-forward way. Note that the concept of POIMs is not limited to interpreting SVMs, but is applicable to general k−mer based scoring systems.

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Sonnenburg, S., Zien, A., Philips, P., Rätsch, G. Positional Oligomer Importance Matrices NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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Machine Learning Algorithms for Polymorphism Detection

Schweikert, G., Zeller, G., Weigel, D., Schölkopf, B., Rätsch, G.

NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Schweikert, G., Zeller, G., Weigel, D., Schölkopf, B., Rätsch, G. Machine Learning Algorithms for Polymorphism Detection NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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An Automated Combination of Kernels for Predicting Protein Subcellular Localization

Zien, A., Ong, C.

NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

Abstract
Protein subcellular localization is a crucial ingredient to many important inferences about cellular processes, including prediction of protein function and protein interactions.We propose a new class of protein sequence kernels which considers all motifs including motifs with gaps. This class of kernels allows the inclusion of pairwise amino acid distances into their computation. We utilize an extension of the multiclass support vector machine (SVM)method which directly solves protein subcellular localization without resorting to the common approach of splitting the problem into several binary classification problems. To automatically search over families of possible amino acid motifs, we optimize over multiple kernels at the same time. We compare our automated approach to four other predictors on three different datasets, and show that we perform better than the current state of the art. Furthermore, our method provides some insights as to which features are most useful for determining subcellular localization, which are in agreement with biological reasoning.

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Zien, A., Ong, C. An Automated Combination of Kernels for Predicting Protein Subcellular Localization NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning in Computational Biology, December 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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Challenges in Brain-Computer Interface Development: Induction, Measurement, Decoding, Integration

Hill, NJ.

Invited keynote talk at the launch of BrainGain, the Dutch BCI research consortium, November 2007 (talk)

Abstract
I‘ll present a perspective on Brain-Computer Interface development from T{\"u}bingen. Some of the benefits promised by BCI technology lie in the near foreseeable future, and some further away. Our motivation is to make BCI technology feasible for the people who could benefit from what it has to offer soon: namely, people in the "completely locked-in" state. I‘ll mention some of the challenges of working with this user group, and explain the specific directions they have motivated us to take in developing experimental methods, algorithms, and software.

ei

[BibTex]

ei Hill, NJ. Challenges in Brain-Computer Interface Development: Induction, Measurement, Decoding, Integration Invited keynote talk at the launch of BrainGain, the Dutch BCI research consortium, November 2007 (talk)

[BibTex]

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Policy Learning for Robotics

Peters, J.

14th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP), November 2007 (talk)

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Peters, J. Policy Learning for Robotics 14th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP), November 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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Hilbert Space Representations of Probability Distributions

Gretton, A.

2nd Workshop on Machine Learning and Optimization at the ISM, October 2007 (talk)

Abstract
Many problems in unsupervised learning require the analysis of features of probability distributions. At the most fundamental level, we might wish to determine whether two distributions are the same, based on samples from each - this is known as the two-sample or homogeneity problem. We use kernel methods to address this problem, by mapping probability distributions to elements in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). Given a sufficiently rich RKHS, these representations are unique: thus comparing feature space representations allows us to compare distributions without ambiguity. Applications include testing whether cancer subtypes are distinguishable on the basis of DNA microarray data, and whether low frequency oscillations measured at an electrode in the cortex have a different distribution during a neural spike. A more difficult problem is to discover whether two random variables drawn from a joint distribution are independent. It turns out that any dependence between pairs of random variables can be encoded in a cross-covariance operator between appropriate RKHS representations of the variables, and we may test independence by looking at a norm of the operator. We demonstrate this independence test by establishing dependence between an English text and its French translation, as opposed to French text on the same topic but otherwise unrelated. Finally, we show that this operator norm is itself a difference in feature means.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Gretton, A. Hilbert Space Representations of Probability Distributions 2nd Workshop on Machine Learning and Optimization at the ISM, October 2007 (talk)

PDF Web [BibTex]

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Regression with Intervals

Kashima, H., Yamazaki, K., Saigo, H., Inokuchi, A.

International Workshop on Data-Mining and Statistical Science (DMSS2007), October 2007, JSAI Incentive Award. Talk was given by Hisashi Kashima. (talk)

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Kashima, H., Yamazaki, K., Saigo, H., Inokuchi, A. Regression with Intervals International Workshop on Data-Mining and Statistical Science (DMSS2007), October 2007, JSAI Incentive Award. Talk was given by Hisashi Kashima. (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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MR-Based PET Attenuation Correction: Method and Validation

Hofmann, M., Steinke, F., Scheel, V., Brady, M., Schölkopf, B., Pichler, B.

Joint Molecular Imaging Conference, September 2007 (talk)

Abstract
PET/MR combines the high soft tissue contrast of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and the functional information of Positron Emission Tomography (PET). For quantitative PET information, correction of tissue photon attenuation is mandatory. Usually in conventional PET, the attenuation map is obtained from a transmission scan, which uses a rotating source, or from the CT scan in case of combined PET/CT. In the case of a PET/MR scanner, there is insufficient space for the rotating source and ideally one would want to calculate the attenuation map from the MR image instead. Since MR images provide information about proton density of the different tissue types, it is not trivial to use this data for PET attenuation correction. We present a method for predicting the PET attenuation map from a given the MR image, using a combination of atlas-registration and recognition of local patterns. Using "leave one out cross validation" we show on a database of 16 MR-CT image pairs that our method reliably allows estimating the CT image from the MR image. Subsequently, as in PET/CT, the PET attenuation map can be predicted from the CT image. On an additional dataset of MR/CT/PET triplets we quantitatively validate that our approach allows PET quantification with an error that is smaller than what would be clinically significant. We demonstrate our approach on T1-weighted human brain scans. However, the presented methods are more general and current research focuses on applying the established methods to human whole body PET/MRI applications.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Hofmann, M., Steinke, F., Scheel, V., Brady, M., Schölkopf, B., Pichler, B. MR-Based PET Attenuation Correction: Method and Validation Joint Molecular Imaging Conference, September 2007 (talk)

PDF Web [BibTex]

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Learning with Transformation Invariant Kernels

Walder, C., Chapelle, O.

(165), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2007 (techreport)

Abstract
Abstract. This paper considers kernels invariant to translation, rotation and dilation. We show that no non-trivial positive definite (p.d.) kernels exist which are radial and dilation invariant, only conditionally positive definite (c.p.d.) ones. Accordingly, we discuss the c.p.d. case and provide some novel analysis, including an elementary derivation of a c.p.d. representer theorem. On the practical side, we give a support vector machine (s.v.m.) algorithm for arbitrary c.p.d. kernels. For the thin-plate kernel this leads to a classifier with only one parameter (the amount of regularisation), which we demonstrate to be as effective as an s.v.m. with the Gaussian kernel, even though the Gaussian involves a second parameter (the length scale).

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Walder, C., Chapelle, O. Learning with Transformation Invariant Kernels (165), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, September 2007 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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Scalable Semidefinite Programming using Convex Perturbations

Kulis, B., Sra, S., Jegelka, S.

(TR-07-47), University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA, September 2007 (techreport)

Abstract
Several important machine learning problems can be modeled and solved via semidefinite programs. Often, researchers invoke off-the-shelf software for the associated optimization, which can be inappropriate for many applications due to computational and storage requirements. In this paper, we introduce the use of convex perturbations for semidefinite programs (SDPs). Using a particular perturbation function, we arrive at an algorithm for SDPs that has several advantages over existing techniques: a) it is simple, requiring only a few lines of MATLAB, b) it is a first-order method which makes it scalable, c) it can easily exploit the structure of a particular SDP to gain efficiency (e.g., when the constraint matrices are low-rank). We demonstrate on several machine learning applications that the proposed algorithm is effective in finding fast approximations to large-scale SDPs.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Kulis, B., Sra, S., Jegelka, S. Scalable Semidefinite Programming using Convex Perturbations (TR-07-47), University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA, September 2007 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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Bayesian methods for NMR structure determination

Habeck, M.

29th Annual Discussion Meeting: Magnetic Resonance in Biophysical Chemistry, September 2007 (talk)

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Habeck, M. Bayesian methods for NMR structure determination 29th Annual Discussion Meeting: Magnetic Resonance in Biophysical Chemistry, September 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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Sparse Multiscale Gaussian Process Regression

Walder, C., Kim, K., Schölkopf, B.

(162), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2007 (techreport)

Abstract
Most existing sparse Gaussian process (g.p.) models seek computational advantages by basing their computations on a set of m basis functions that are the covariance function of the g.p. with one of its two inputs fixed. We generalise this for the case of Gaussian covariance function, by basing our computations on m Gaussian basis functions with arbitrary diagonal covariance matrices (or length scales). For a fixed number of basis functions and any given criteria, this additional flexibility permits approximations no worse and typically better than was previously possible. Although we focus on g.p. regression, the central idea is applicable to all kernel based algorithms, such as the support vector machine. We perform gradient based optimisation of the marginal likelihood, which costs O(m2n) time where n is the number of data points, and compare the method to various other sparse g.p. methods. Our approach outperforms the other methods, particularly for the case of very few basis functions, i.e. a very high sparsity ratio.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Walder, C., Kim, K., Schölkopf, B. Sparse Multiscale Gaussian Process Regression (162), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2007 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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Efficient Subwindow Search for Object Localization

Blaschko, M., Hofmann, T., Lampert, C.

(164), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2007 (techreport)

Abstract
Recent years have seen huge advances in object recognition from images. Recognition rates beyond 95% are the rule rather than the exception on many datasets. However, most state-of-the-art methods can only decide if an object is present or not. They are not able to provide information on the object location or extent within in the image. We report on a simple yet powerful scheme that extends many existing recognition methods to also perform localization of object bounding boxes. This is achieved by maximizing the classification score over all possible subrectangles in the image. Despite the impression that this would be computationally intractable, we show that in many situations efficient algorithms exist which solve a generalized maximum subrectangle problem. We show how our method is applicable to a variety object detection frameworks and demonstrate its performance by applying it to the popular bag of visual words model, achieving competitive results on the PASCAL VOC 2006 dataset.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Blaschko, M., Hofmann, T., Lampert, C. Efficient Subwindow Search for Object Localization (164), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2007 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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Thinking Out Loud: Research and Development of Brain Computer Interfaces

Hill, NJ.

Invited keynote talk at the Max Planck Society‘s PhDNet Workshop., July 2007 (talk)

Abstract
My principal interest is in applying machine-learning methods to the development of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI). This involves the classification of a user‘s intentions or mental states, or regression against some continuous intentional control signal, using brain signals obtained for example by EEG, ECoG or MEG. The long-term aim is to develop systems that a completely paralysed person (such as someone suffering from advanced Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) could use to communicate. Such systems have the potential to improve the lives of many people who would be otherwise completely unable to communicate, but they are still very much in the research and development stages.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Hill, NJ. Thinking Out Loud: Research and Development of Brain Computer Interfaces Invited keynote talk at the Max Planck Society‘s PhDNet Workshop., July 2007 (talk)

PDF [BibTex]

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Dirichlet Process Mixtures of Factor Analysers

Görür, D., Rasmussen, C.

Fifth Workshop on Bayesian Inference in Stochastic Processes (BSP5), June 2007 (talk)

Abstract
Mixture of factor analysers (MFA) is a well-known model that combines the dimensionality reduction technique of Factor Analysis (FA) with mixture modeling. The key issue in MFA is deciding on the latent dimension and the number of mixture components to be used. The Bayesian treatment of MFA has been considered by Beal and Ghahramani (2000) using variational approximation and by Fokoué and Titterington (2003) using birth-and –death Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). Here, we present the nonparametric MFA model utilizing a Dirichlet process (DP) prior on the component parameters (that is, the factor loading matrix and the mean vector of each component) and describe an MCMC scheme for inference. The clustering property of the DP provides automatic selection of the number of mixture components. The latent dimensionality of each component is inferred by automatic relevance determination (ARD). Identifying the action potentials of individual neurons from extracellular recordings, known as spike sorting, is a challenging clustering problem. We apply our model for clustering the waveforms recorded from the cortex of a macaque monkey.

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Görür, D., Rasmussen, C. Dirichlet Process Mixtures of Factor Analysers Fifth Workshop on Bayesian Inference in Stochastic Processes (BSP5), June 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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New BCI approaches: Selective Attention to Auditory and Tactile Stimulus Streams

Hill, N., Raths, C.

Invited talk at the PASCAL Workshop on Methods of Data Analysis in Computational Neuroscience and Brain Computer Interfaces, June 2007 (talk)

Abstract
When considering Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) development for patients in the most severely paralysed states, there is considerable motivation to move away from BCI systems based on either motor cortex activity, or on visual stimuli. Together these account for most of current BCI research. I present the results of our recent exploration of new auditory- and tactile-stimulus-driven BCIs. The talk includes a tutorial on the construction and interpretation of classifiers which extract spatio-temporal features from event-related potential data. The effects and implications of whitening are discussed, and preliminary results on the effectiveness of a low-rank constraint (Tomioka and Aihara 2007) are shown.

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Hill, N., Raths, C. New BCI approaches: Selective Attention to Auditory and Tactile Stimulus Streams Invited talk at the PASCAL Workshop on Methods of Data Analysis in Computational Neuroscience and Brain Computer Interfaces, June 2007 (talk)

PDF Web [BibTex]

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Towards Motor Skill Learning in Robotics

Peters, J.

Interactive Robot Learning - RSS workshop, June 2007 (talk)

ei

Web [BibTex]

ei Peters, J. Towards Motor Skill Learning in Robotics Interactive Robot Learning - RSS workshop, June 2007 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

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Transductive Support Vector Machines for Structured Variables

Zien, A., Brefeld, U., Scheffer, T.

International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), June 2007 (talk)

Abstract
We study the problem of learning kernel machines transductively for structured output variables. Transductive learning can be reduced to combinatorial optimization problems over all possible labelings of the unlabeled data. In order to scale transductive learning to structured variables, we transform the corresponding non-convex, combinatorial, constrained optimization problems into continuous, unconstrained optimization problems. The discrete optimization parameters are eliminated and the resulting differentiable problems can be optimized efficiently. We study the effectiveness of the generalized TSVM on multiclass classification and label-sequence learning problems empirically.

ei

PDF PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Zien, A., Brefeld, U., Scheffer, T. Transductive Support Vector Machines for Structured Variables International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), June 2007 (talk)

PDF PDF Web [BibTex]

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Impact of target-to-target interval on classification performance in the P300 speller

Martens, S., Hill, J., Farquhar, J., Schölkopf, B.

Scientific Meeting "Applied Neuroscience for Healthy Brain Function", May 2007 (talk)

ei

PDF Web [BibTex]

ei Martens, S., Hill, J., Farquhar, J., Schölkopf, B. Impact of target-to-target interval on classification performance in the P300 speller Scientific Meeting "Applied Neuroscience for Healthy Brain Function", May 2007 (talk)

PDF Web [BibTex]

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Cluster Identification in Nearest-Neighbor Graphs

Maier, M., Hein, M., von Luxburg, U.

(163), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, May 2007 (techreport)

Abstract
Assume we are given a sample of points from some underlying distribution which contains several distinct clusters. Our goal is to construct a neighborhood graph on the sample points such that clusters are ``identified‘‘: that is, the subgraph induced by points from the same cluster is connected, while subgraphs corresponding to different clusters are not connected to each other. We derive bounds on the probability that cluster identification is successful, and use them to predict ``optimal‘‘ values of k for the mutual and symmetric k-nearest-neighbor graphs. We point out different properties of the mutual and symmetric nearest-neighbor graphs related to the cluster identification problem.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Maier, M., Hein, M., von Luxburg, U. Cluster Identification in Nearest-Neighbor Graphs (163), Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, May 2007 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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Dirichlet Mixtures of Bayesian Linear Gaussian State-Space Models: a Variational Approach

Chiappa, S., Barber, D.

(161), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, March 2007 (techreport)

Abstract
We describe two related models to cluster multidimensional time-series under the assumption of an underlying linear Gaussian dynamical process. In the first model, times-series are assigned to the same cluster when they show global similarity in their dynamics, while in the second model times-series are assigned to the same cluster when they show simultaneous similarity. Both models are based on Dirichlet Mixtures of Bayesian Linear Gaussian State-Space Models in order to (semi) automatically determine an appropriate number of components in the mixture, and to additionally bias the components to a parsimonious parameterization. The resulting models are formally intractable and to deal with this we describe a deterministic approximation based on a novel implementation of Variational Bayes.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Chiappa, S., Barber, D. Dirichlet Mixtures of Bayesian Linear Gaussian State-Space Models: a Variational Approach (161), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, March 2007 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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Automatic 3D Face Reconstruction from Single Images or Video

Breuer, P., Kim, K., Kienzle, W., Blanz, V., Schölkopf, B.

(160), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, February 2007 (techreport)

Abstract
This paper presents a fully automated algorithm for reconstructing a textured 3D model of a face from a single photograph or a raw video stream. The algorithm is based on a combination of Support Vector Machines (SVMs) and a Morphable Model of 3D faces. After SVM face detection, individual facial features are detected using a novel regression-and classification-based approach, and probabilistically plausible configurations of features are selected to produce a list of candidates for several facial feature positions. In the next step, the configurations of feature points are evaluated using a novel criterion that is based on a Morphable Model and a combination of linear projections. Finally, the feature points initialize a model-fitting procedure of the Morphable Model. The result is a high-resolution 3D surface model.

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Breuer, P., Kim, K., Kienzle, W., Blanz, V., Schölkopf, B. Automatic 3D Face Reconstruction from Single Images or Video (160), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, February 2007 (techreport)

PDF [BibTex]

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New Margin- and Evidence-Based Approaches for EEG Signal Classification

Hill, N., Farquhar, J.

Invited talk at the FaSor Jahressymposium, February 2007 (talk)

ei

PDF [BibTex]

ei Hill, N., Farquhar, J. New Margin- and Evidence-Based Approaches for EEG Signal Classification Invited talk at the FaSor Jahressymposium, February 2007 (talk)

PDF [BibTex]

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Relative Entropy Policy Search

Peters, J.

CLMC Technical Report: TR-CLMC-2007-2, Computational Learning and Motor Control Lab, Los Angeles, CA, 2007, clmc (techreport)

Abstract
This technical report describes a cute idea of how to create new policy search approaches. It directly relates to the Natural Actor-Critic methods but allows the derivation of one shot solutions. Future work may include the application to interesting problems.

am ei

PDF link (url) [BibTex]

am ei Peters, J. Relative Entropy Policy Search CLMC Technical Report: TR-CLMC-2007-2, Computational Learning and Motor Control Lab, Los Angeles, CA, 2007, clmc (techreport)

PDF link (url) [BibTex]

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Learning an Outlier-Robust Kalman Filter

Ting, J., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S.

CLMC Technical Report: TR-CLMC-2007-1, Los Angeles, CA, 2007, clmc (techreport)

Abstract
We introduce a modified Kalman filter that performs robust, real-time outlier detection, without the need for manual parameter tuning by the user. Systems that rely on high quality sensory data (for instance, robotic systems) can be sensitive to data containing outliers. The standard Kalman filter is not robust to outliers, and other variations of the Kalman filter have been proposed to overcome this issue. However, these methods may require manual parameter tuning, use of heuristics or complicated parameter estimation procedures. Our Kalman filter uses a weighted least squares-like approach by introducing weights for each data sample. A data sample with a smaller weight has a weaker contribution when estimating the current time step?s state. Using an incremental variational Expectation-Maximization framework, we learn the weights and system dynamics. We evaluate our Kalman filter algorithm on data from a robotic dog.

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am Ting, J., Theodorou, E., Schaal, S. Learning an Outlier-Robust Kalman Filter CLMC Technical Report: TR-CLMC-2007-1, Los Angeles, CA, 2007, clmc (techreport)

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2005

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Some thoughts about Gaussian Processes

Chapelle, O.

NIPS Workshop on Open Problems in Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning, December 2005 (talk)

ei

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2005

ei Chapelle, O. Some thoughts about Gaussian Processes NIPS Workshop on Open Problems in Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning, December 2005 (talk)

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Popper, Falsification and the VC-dimension

Corfield, D., Schölkopf, B., Vapnik, V.

(145), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, November 2005 (techreport)

ei

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ei Corfield, D., Schölkopf, B., Vapnik, V. Popper, Falsification and the VC-dimension (145), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, November 2005 (techreport)

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A Combinatorial View of Graph Laplacians

Huang, J.

(144), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2005 (techreport)

Abstract
Discussions about different graph Laplacian, mainly normalized and unnormalized versions of graph Laplacian, have been ardent with respect to various methods in clustering and graph based semi-supervised learning. Previous research on graph Laplacians investigated their convergence properties to Laplacian operators on continuous manifolds. There is still no strong proof on convergence for the normalized Laplacian. In this paper, we analyze different variants of graph Laplacians directly from the ways solving the original graph partitioning problem. The graph partitioning problem is a well-known combinatorial NP hard optimization problem. The spectral solutions provide evidence that normalized Laplacian encodes more reasonable considerations for graph partitioning. We also provide some examples to show their differences.

ei

[BibTex]

ei Huang, J. A Combinatorial View of Graph Laplacians (144), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, August 2005 (techreport)

[BibTex]

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Beyond Pairwise Classification and Clustering Using Hypergraphs

Zhou, D., Huang, J., Schölkopf, B.

(143), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, August 2005 (techreport)

Abstract
In many applications, relationships among objects of interest are more complex than pairwise. Simply approximating complex relationships as pairwise ones can lead to loss of information. An alternative for these applications is to analyze complex relationships among data directly, without the need to first represent the complex relationships into pairwise ones. A natural way to describe complex relationships is to use hypergraphs. A hypergraph is a graph in which edges can connect more than two vertices. Thus we consider learning from a hypergraph, and develop a general framework which is applicable to classification and clustering for complex relational data. We have applied our framework to real-world web classification problems and obtained encouraging results.

ei

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ei Zhou, D., Huang, J., Schölkopf, B. Beyond Pairwise Classification and Clustering Using Hypergraphs (143), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, August 2005 (techreport)

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Building Sparse Large Margin Classifiers

Wu, M., Schölkopf, B., BakIr, G.

The 22nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), August 2005 (talk)

ei

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ei Wu, M., Schölkopf, B., BakIr, G. Building Sparse Large Margin Classifiers The 22nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), August 2005 (talk)

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Learning from Labeled and Unlabeled Data on a Directed Graph

Zhou, D.

The 22nd International Conference on Machine Learning, August 2005 (talk)

Abstract
We propose a general framework for learning from labeled and unlabeled data on a directed graph in which the structure of the graph including the directionality of the edges is considered. The time complexity of the algorithm derived from this framework is nearly linear due to recently developed numerical techniques. In the absence of labeled instances, this framework can be utilized as a spectral clustering method for directed graphs, which generalizes the spectral clustering approach for undirected graphs. We have applied our framework to real-world web classification problems and obtained encouraging results.

ei

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ei Zhou, D. Learning from Labeled and Unlabeled Data on a Directed Graph The 22nd International Conference on Machine Learning, August 2005 (talk)

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Machine-Learning Approaches to BCI in Tübingen

Bensch, M., Bogdan, M., Hill, N., Lal, T., Rosenstiel, W., Schölkopf, B., Schröder, M.

Brain-Computer Interface Technology, June 2005, Talk given by NJH. (talk)

ei

[BibTex]

ei Bensch, M., Bogdan, M., Hill, N., Lal, T., Rosenstiel, W., Schölkopf, B., Schröder, M. Machine-Learning Approaches to BCI in Tübingen Brain-Computer Interface Technology, June 2005, Talk given by NJH. (talk)

[BibTex]

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Measuring Statistical Dependence with Hilbert-Schmidt Norms

Gretton, A., Bousquet, O., Smola, A., Schölkopf, B.

(140), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2005 (techreport)

Abstract
We propose an independence criterion based on the eigenspectrum of covariance operators in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs), consisting of an empirical estimate of the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the cross-covariance operator (we term this a Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion, or HSIC). This approach has several advantages, compared with previous kernel-based independence criteria. First, the empirical estimate is simpler than any other kernel dependence test, and requires no user-defined regularisation. Second, there is a clearly defined population quantity which the empirical estimate approaches in the large sample limit, with exponential convergence guaranteed between the two: this ensures that independence tests based on HSIC do not suffer from slow learning rates. Finally, we show in the context of independent component analysis (ICA) that the performance of HSIC is competitive with that of previously published kernel-based criteria, and of other recently published ICA methods.

ei

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ei Gretton, A., Bousquet, O., Smola, A., Schölkopf, B. Measuring Statistical Dependence with Hilbert-Schmidt Norms (140), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, June 2005 (techreport)

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Kernel Constrained Covariance for Dependence Measurement

Gretton, A., Smola, A., Bousquet, O., Herbrich, R., Belitski, A., Augath, M., Murayama, Y., Schölkopf, B., Logothetis, N.

AISTATS, January 2005 (talk)

Abstract
We discuss reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS)-based measures of statistical dependence, with emphasis on constrained covariance (COCO), a novel criterion to test dependence of random variables. We show that COCO is a test for independence if and only if the associated RKHSs are universal. That said, no independence test exists that can distinguish dependent and independent random variables in all circumstances. Dependent random variables can result in a COCO which is arbitrarily close to zero when the source densities are highly non-smooth. All current kernel-based independence tests share this behaviour. We demonstrate exponential convergence between the population and empirical COCO. Finally, we use COCO as a measure of joint neural activity between voxels in MRI recordings of the macaque monkey, and compare the results to the mutual information and the correlation. We also show the effect of removing breathing artefacts from the MRI recording.

ei

PostScript [BibTex]

ei Gretton, A., Smola, A., Bousquet, O., Herbrich, R., Belitski, A., Augath, M., Murayama, Y., Schölkopf, B., Logothetis, N. Kernel Constrained Covariance for Dependence Measurement AISTATS, January 2005 (talk)

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Approximate Inference for Robust Gaussian Process Regression

Kuss, M., Pfingsten, T., Csato, L., Rasmussen, C.

(136), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2005 (techreport)

Abstract
Gaussian process (GP) priors have been successfully used in non-parametric Bayesian regression and classification models. Inference can be performed analytically only for the regression model with Gaussian noise. For all other likelihood models inference is intractable and various approximation techniques have been proposed. In recent years expectation-propagation (EP) has been developed as a general method for approximate inference. This article provides a general summary of how expectation-propagation can be used for approximate inference in Gaussian process models. Furthermore we present a case study describing its implementation for a new robust variant of Gaussian process regression. To gain further insights into the quality of the EP approximation we present experiments in which we compare to results obtained by Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling.

ei

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ei Kuss, M., Pfingsten, T., Csato, L., Rasmussen, C. Approximate Inference for Robust Gaussian Process Regression (136), Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2005 (techreport)

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Maximum-Margin Feature Combination for Detection and Categorization

BakIr, G., Wu, M., Eichhorn, J.

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2005 (techreport)

Abstract
In this paper we are concerned with the optimal combination of features of possibly different types for detection and estimation tasks in machine vision. We propose to combine features such that the resulting classifier maximizes the margin between classes. In contrast to existing approaches which are non-convex and/or generative we propose to use a discriminative model leading to convex problem formulation and complexity control. Furthermore we assert that decision functions should not compare apples and oranges by comparing features of different types directly. Instead we propose to combine different similarity measures for each different feature type. Furthermore we argue that the question: ”Which feature type is more discriminative for task X?” is ill-posed and show empirically that the answer to this question might depend on the complexity of the decision function.

ei

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ei BakIr, G., Wu, M., Eichhorn, J. Maximum-Margin Feature Combination for Detection and Categorization Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2005 (techreport)

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