Samir Brahim Belhaouari

Giuseppe Stragapede, Ruben Vera-Rodriguez, Ruben Tolosana et al.

This paper describes the experimental framework and results of the IJCB 2022 Mobile Behavioral Biometrics Competition (MobileB2C). The aim of MobileB2C is benchmarking mobile user authentication systems based on behavioral biometric traits transparently acquired by mobile devices during ordinary Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), using a novel public database, BehavePassDB, and a standard experimental protocol. The competition is divided into four tasks corresponding to typical user activities: keystroke, text reading, gallery swiping, and tapping. The data are composed of touchscreen data and several background sensor data simultaneously acquired. "Random" (different users with different devices) and "skilled" (different user on the same device attempting to imitate the legitimate one) impostor scenarios are considered. The results achieved by the participants show the feasibility of user authentication through behavioral biometrics, although this proves to be a non-trivial challenge. MobileB2C will be established as an on-going competition.

Rachid Hedjam, Abdelhamid Abdesselam, Seyed Mohammad Jafar Jalali et al.

Various Non-negative Matrix factorization (NMF) based methods add new terms to the cost function to adapt the model to specific tasks, such as clustering, or to preserve some structural properties in the reduced space (e.g., local invariance). The added term is mainly weighted by a hyper-parameter to control the balance of the overall formula to guide the optimization process towards the objective. The result is a parameterized NMF method. However, NMF method adopts unsupervised approaches to estimate the factorizing matrices. Thus, the ability to perform prediction (e.g. classification) using the new obtained features is not guaranteed. The objective of this work is to design an evolutionary framework to learn the hyper-parameter of the parameterized NMF and estimate the factorizing matrices in a supervised way to be more suitable for classification problems. Moreover, we claim that applying NMF-based algorithms separately to different class-pairs instead of applying it once to the whole dataset improves the effectiveness of the matrix factorization process. This results in training multiple parameterized NMF algorithms with different balancing parameter values. A cross-validation combination learning framework is adopted and a Genetic Algorithm is used to identify the optimal set of hyper-parameter values. The experiments we conducted on both real and synthetic datasets demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Md. Rafiul Biswas, Ashhadul Islam, Zubair Shah et al.

The advanced large language model (LLM) ChatGPT has shown its potential in different domains and remains unbeaten due to its characteristics compared to other LLMs. This study aims to evaluate the potential of using a fine-tuned ChatGPT model as a personal medical assistant in the Arabic language. To do so, this study uses publicly available online questions and answering datasets in Arabic language. There are almost 430K questions and answers for 20 disease-specific categories. GPT-3.5-turbo model was fine-tuned with a portion of this dataset. The performance of this fine-tuned model was evaluated through automated and human evaluation. The automated evaluations include perplexity, coherence, similarity, and token count. Native Arabic speakers with medical knowledge evaluated the generated text by calculating relevance, accuracy, precision, logic, and originality. The overall result shows that ChatGPT has a bright future in medical assistance.

Ashhadul Islam, Md. Rafiul Biswas, Wajdi Zaghouani et al.

$ $The synergy of language and vision models has given rise to Large Language and Vision Assistant models (LLVAs), designed to engage users in rich conversational experiences intertwined with image-based queries. These comprehensive multimodal models seamlessly integrate vision encoders with Large Language Models (LLMs), expanding their applications in general-purpose language and visual comprehension. The advent of Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) heralds a new era in Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistance, extending the horizons of AI utilization. This paper takes a unique perspective on LMMs, exploring their efficacy in performing image classification tasks using tailored prompts designed for specific datasets. We also investigate the LLVAs zero-shot learning capabilities. Our study includes a benchmarking analysis across four diverse datasets: MNIST, Cats Vs. Dogs, Hymnoptera (Ants Vs. Bees), and an unconventional dataset comprising Pox Vs. Non-Pox skin images. The results of our experiments demonstrate the model's remarkable performance, achieving classification accuracies of 85\%, 100\%, 77\%, and 79\% for the respective datasets without any fine-tuning. To bolster our analysis, we assess the model's performance post fine-tuning for specific tasks. In one instance, fine-tuning is conducted over a dataset comprising images of faces of children with and without autism. Prior to fine-tuning, the model demonstrated a test accuracy of 55\%, which significantly improved to 83\% post fine-tuning. These results, coupled with our prior findings, underscore the transformative potential of LLVAs and their versatile applications in real-world scenarios.

Ashhadul Islam, Abdesselam Bouzerdoum, Samir Brahim Belhaouari

Traditional neural networks employ fixed weights during inference, limiting their ability to adapt to changing input conditions, unlike biological neurons that adjust signal strength dynamically based on stimuli. This discrepancy between artificial and biological neurons constrains neural network flexibility and adaptability. To bridge this gap, we propose a novel framework for adaptive neural networks, where neuron weights are modeled as functions of the input signal, allowing the network to adjust dynamically in real-time. Importantly, we achieve this within the same traditional architecture of an Artificial Neural Network, maintaining structural familiarity while introducing dynamic adaptability. In our research, we apply Chebyshev polynomials as one of the many possible decomposition methods to achieve this adaptive weighting mechanism, with polynomial coefficients learned during training. Out of the 145 datasets tested, our adaptive Chebyshev neural network demonstrated a marked improvement over an equivalent MLP in approximately 8\% of cases, performing strictly better on 121 datasets. In the remaining 24 datasets, the performance of our algorithm matched that of the MLP, highlighting its ability to generalize standard neural network behavior while offering enhanced adaptability. As a generalized form of the MLP, this model seamlessly retains MLP performance where needed while extending its capabilities to achieve superior accuracy across a wide range of complex tasks. These results underscore the potential of adaptive neurons to enhance generalization, flexibility, and robustness in neural networks, particularly in applications with dynamic or non-linear data dependencies.

Farida Mohsen, Samir Belhaouari, Zubair Shah

Diabetic retinopathy is a serious ocular complication that poses a significant threat to patients' vision and overall health. Early detection and accurate grading are essential to prevent vision loss. Current automatic grading methods rely heavily on deep learning applied to retinal fundus images, but the complex, irregular patterns of lesions in these images, which vary in shape and distribution, make it difficult to capture subtle changes. This study introduces RadFuse, a multi-representation deep learning framework that integrates non-linear RadEx-transformed sinogram images with traditional fundus images to enhance diabetic retinopathy detection and grading. Our RadEx transformation, an optimized non-linear extension of the Radon transform, generates sinogram representations to capture complex retinal lesion patterns. By leveraging both spatial and transformed domain information, RadFuse enriches the feature set available to deep learning models, improving the differentiation of severity levels. We conducted extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets, APTOS-2019 and DDR, using three convolutional neural networks (CNNs): ResNeXt-50, MobileNetV2, and VGG19. RadFuse showed significant improvements over fundus-image-only models across all three CNN architectures and outperformed state-of-the-art methods on both datasets. For severity grading across five stages, RadFuse achieved a quadratic weighted kappa of 93.24%, an accuracy of 87.07%, and an F1-score of 87.17%. In binary classification between healthy and diabetic retinopathy cases, the method reached an accuracy of 99.09%, precision of 98.58%, and recall of 99.6%, surpassing previously established models. These results demonstrate RadFuse's capacity to capture complex non-linear features, advancing diabetic retinopathy classification and promoting the integration of advanced mathematical transforms in medical image analysis.

Ashhadul Islam, Samir Brahim Belhaouari, Amine Bermak

The exponential growth of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT has revolutionized artificial intelligence, offering unprecedented capabilities in natural language processing. However, the extensive computational resources required for training these models have significant environmental implications, including high carbon emissions, energy consumption, and water usage. This research presents a novel approach to LLM pruning, focusing on the systematic evaluation of individual weight importance throughout the training process. By monitoring parameter evolution over time, we propose a method that effectively reduces model size without compromising performance. Extensive experiments with both a scaled-down LLM and a large multimodal model reveal that moderate pruning enhances efficiency and reduces loss, while excessive pruning drastically deteriorates model performance. These findings highlight the critical need for optimized AI models to ensure sustainable development, balancing technological advancement with environmental responsibility.

Amal Awadalla Ali, Asma Hamid ElFadl, Maha Fawzy Abujazar et al.

Contact tracing apps are powerful software tools that can help control the spread of COVID-19. In this article, we evaluated 53 COVID-19 contact tracing apps found on the Google Play Store in terms of their usage, rating, access permission, and user privacy. For each app included in the study, we identified the country of origin, number of downloads, and access permissions to further understand the attributes and ratings of the apps. Our results show that contact tracing apps had low overall ratings and nearly 40% of the included apps were requesting dangerous access permission including access to storage, media files, and camera permissions. We also found that user adoption rates were inversely correlated to access permission requirements. To the best of our knowledge, our article summarizes the most extensive collection of contact tracing apps for COVID-19. We recommend that future contact tracing apps should be more transparent in permission requirements and should provide justification for permissions requested to preserve the app users privacy.