An Adversarial Learning Based Approach for Unknown View Tomographic Reconstruction

The goal of 2D tomographic reconstruction is to recover an image given its projection lines from various views. It is often presumed that projection angles associated with the projection lines are known in advance. Under certain situations, however, these angles are known only approximately or are completely unknown. It becomes more challenging to reconstruct the image from a collection of random projection lines. We propose an adversarial learning based approach to recover the image and the projection angle distribution by matching the empirical distribution of the measurements with the generated data. Fitting the distributions is achieved through solving a min-max game between a generator and a critic based on Wasserstein generative adversarial network structure. To accommodate the update of the projection angle distribution through gradient back propagation, we approximate the loss using the Gumbel-Softmax reparameterization of samples from discrete distributions. Our theoretical analysis verifies the unique recovery of the image and the projection distribution up to a rotation and reflection upon convergence. Our extensive numerical experiments showcase the potential of our method to accurately recover the image and the projection angle distribution under noise contamination.

Advances in Machine and Deep Learning for Modeling and Real-time Detection of Multi-Messenger Sources

We live in momentous times. The science community is empowered with an arsenal of cosmic messengers to study the Universe in unprecedented detail. Gravitational waves, electromagnetic waves, neutrinos and cosmic rays cover a wide range of wavelengths and time scales. Combining and processing these datasets that vary in volume, speed and dimensionality requires new modes of instrument coordination, funding and international collaboration with a specialized human and technological infrastructure. In tandem with the advent of large-scale scientific facilities, the last decade has experienced an unprecedented transformation in computing and signal processing algorithms. The combination of graphics processing units, deep learning, and the availability of open source, high-quality datasets, have powered the rise of artificial intelligence. This digital revolution now powers a multi-billion dollar industry, with far-reaching implications in technology and society. In this chapter we describe pioneering efforts to adapt artificial intelligence algorithms to address computational grand challenges in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics. We review the rapid evolution of these disruptive algorithms, from the first class of algorithms introduced in early 2017, to the sophisticated algorithms that now incorporate domain expertise in their architectural design and optimization schemes. We discuss the importance of scientific visualization and extreme-scale computing in reducing time-to-insight and obtaining new knowledge from the interplay between models and data.

Joint Community Detection and Rotational Synchronization via Semidefinite Programming

In the presence of heterogeneous data, where randomly rotated objects fall into multiple underlying categories, it is challenging to simultaneously classify them into clusters and synchronize them based on pairwise relations. This gives rise to the joint problem of community detection and synchronization. We propose a series of semidefinite relaxations, and prove their exact recovery when extending the celebrated stochastic block model to this new setting where both rotations and cluster identities are to be determined. Numerical experiments demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed algorithms and confirm our theoretical result which indicates a sharp phase transition for exact recovery.

Spatial-temporal switching estimators for imaging locally concentrated dynamics

The evolution of images with physics-based dynamics is often spatially localized and nonlinear. A switching linear dynamic system (SLDS) is a natural model under which to pose such problems when the systems evolution randomly switches over the observation interval. Because of the high parameter space dimensionality, efficient and accurate recovery of the underlying state is challenging. The work presented in this paper focuses on the common cases where the dynamic evolution may be adequately modeled as a collection of decoupled, locally concentrated dynamic operators. Patch-based hybrid estimators are proposed for real-time reconstruction of images from noisy measurements given perfect or partial information about the underlying system dynamics. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for denoising in a realistic data-driven simulation of remotely sensed cloud dynamics.

MSR-GAN: Multi-Segment Reconstruction via Adversarial Learning

Multi-segment reconstruction (MSR) is the problem of estimating a signal given noisy partial observations. Here each observation corresponds to a randomly located segment of the signal. While previous works address this problem using template or moment-matching, in this paper we address MSR from an unsupervised adversarial learning standpoint, named MSR-GAN. We formulate MSR as a distribution matching problem where the goal is to recover the signal and the probability distribution of the segments such that the distribution of the generated measurements following a known forward model is close to the real observations. This is achieved once a min-max optimization involving a generator-discriminator pair is solved. MSR-GAN is mainly inspired by CryoGAN [1]. However, in MSR-GAN we no longer assume the probability distribution of the latent variables, i.e. segment locations, is given and seek to recover it alongside the unknown signal. For this purpose, we show that the loss at the generator side originally is non-differentiable with respect to the segment distribution. Thus, we propose to approximate it using Gumbel-Softmax reparametrization trick. Our proposed solution is generalizable to a wide range of inverse problems. Our simulation results and comparison with various baselines verify the potential of our approach in different settings.

UVTomo-GAN: An adversarial learning based approach for unknown view X-ray tomographic reconstruction

Tomographic reconstruction recovers an unknown image given its projections from different angles. State-of-the-art methods addressing this problem assume the angles associated with the projections are known a-priori. Given this knowledge, the reconstruction process is straightforward as it can be formulated as a convex problem. Here, we tackle a more challenging setting: 1) the projection angles are unknown, 2) they are drawn from an unknown probability distribution. In this set-up our goal is to recover the image and the projection angle distribution using an unsupervised adversarial learning approach. For this purpose, we formulate the problem as a distribution matching between the real projection lines and the generated ones from the estimated image and projection distribution. This is then solved by reaching the equilibrium in a min-max game between a generator and a discriminator. Our novel contribution is to recover the unknown projection distribution and the image simultaneously using adversarial learning. To accommodate this, we use Gumbel-softmax approximation of samples from categorical distribution to approximate the generators loss as a function of the unknown image and the projection distribution. Our approach can be generalized to different inverse problems. Our simulation results reveal the ability of our method in successfully recovering the image and the projection distribution in various settings.

Unsupervised Co-Learning on $mathcal{G}$-Manifolds Across Irreducible Representations

We introduce a novel co-learning paradigm for manifolds naturally equipped with a group action, motivated by recent developments on learning a manifold from attached fibre bundle structures. We utilize a representation theoretic mechanism that canonically associates multiple independent vector bundles over a common base manifold, which provides multiple views for the geometry of the underlying manifold. The consistency across these fibre bundles provide a common base for performing unsupervised manifold co-learning through the redundancy created artificially across irreducible representations of the transformation group. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithmic paradigm through drastically improved robust nearest neighbor search and community detection on rotation-invariant cryo-electron microscopy image analysis.

Representation Theoretic Patterns in Multi-Frequency Class Averaging for Three-Dimensional Cryo-Electron Microscopy

We develop in this paper a novel intrinsic classification algorithm -- multi-frequency class averaging (MFCA) -- for classifying noisy projection images obtained from three-dimensional cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) by the similarity among their viewing directions. This new algorithm leverages multiple irreducible representations of the unitary group to introduce additional redundancy into the representation of the optimal in-plane rotational alignment, extending and outperforming the existing class averaging algorithm that uses only a single representation. The formal algebraic model and representation theoretic patterns of the proposed MFCA algorithm extend the framework of Hadani and Singer to arbitrary irreducible representations of the unitary group. We conceptually establish the consistency and stability of MFCA by inspecting the spectral properties of a generalized local parallel transport operator through the lens of Wigner $D$-matrices. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm with numerical experiments.

Two-Dimensional Tomography From Noisy Projection Tilt Series Taken At Unknown View Angles With Non-Uniform Distribution

We consider a problem that recovers a 2-D object and the underlying view angle distribution from its noisy projection tilt series taken at unknown view angles. Traditional approaches rely on the estimation of the view angles of the projections, which do not scale well with the sample size and are sensitive to noise. We introduce a new approach using the moment features to simultaneously recover the underlying object and the distribution of view angles. This problem is formulated as constrained nonlinear least squares in terms of the truncated Fourier-Bessel expansion coefficients of the object and is solved by a new alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based algorithm. Our numerical experiments show that the new approach outperforms the expectation maximization (EM)-based maximum marginalized likelihood estimation in efficiency and accuracy. Furthermore, the hybrid method that uses EM to refine ADMM solution achieves the best performance.

Multi-Frequency Phase Synchronization

We propose a novel formulation for phase synchronization -- the statistical problem of jointly estimating alignment angles from noisy pairwise comparisons -- as a nonconvex optimization problem that enforces consistency among the pairwise comparisons in multiple frequency channels. Inspired by harmonic retrieval in signal processing, we develop a simple yet efficient two-stage algorithm that leverages the multi-frequency information. We demonstrate in theory and practice that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms state-of-the-art phase synchronization algorithms, at a mild computational costs incurred by using the extra frequency channels. We also extend our algorithmic framework to general synchronization problems over compact Lie groups.