Rizwan Ahmed Khan

Sidra Nasir, Rizwan Ahmed Khan, Samita Bai

In the past decade, the deployment of deep learning (Artificial Intelligence (AI)) methods has become pervasive across a spectrum of real-world applications, often in safety-critical contexts. This comprehensive research article rigorously investigates the ethical dimensions intricately linked to the rapid evolution of AI technologies, with a particular focus on the healthcare domain. Delving deeply, it explores a multitude of facets including transparency, adept data management, human oversight, educational imperatives, and international collaboration within the realm of AI advancement. Central to this article is the proposition of a conscientious AI framework, meticulously crafted to accentuate values of transparency, equity, answerability, and a human-centric orientation. The second contribution of the article is the in-depth and thorough discussion of the limitations inherent to AI systems. It astutely identifies potential biases and the intricate challenges of navigating multifaceted contexts. Lastly, the article unequivocally accentuates the pressing need for globally standardized AI ethics principles and frameworks. Simultaneously, it aptly illustrates the adaptability of the ethical framework proposed herein, positioned skillfully to surmount emergent challenges.

Unaiza Sajid, Rizwan Ahmed Khan, Shahid Munir Shah et al.

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death among women across the globe. It is difficult to treat if detected at advanced stages, however, early detection can significantly increase chances of survival and improves lives of millions of women. Given the widespread prevalence of breast cancer, it is of utmost importance for the research community to come up with the framework for early detection, classification and diagnosis. Artificial intelligence research community in coordination with medical practitioners are developing such frameworks to automate the task of detection. With the surge in research activities coupled with availability of large datasets and enhanced computational powers, it expected that AI framework results will help even more clinicians in making correct predictions. In this article, a novel framework for classification of breast cancer using mammograms is proposed. The proposed framework combines robust features extracted from novel Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) features with handcrafted features including HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradients) and LBP (Local Binary Pattern). The obtained results on CBIS-DDSM dataset exceed state of the art.

Wardah Ali, Eesha Qureshi, Omama Ahmed Farooqi et al.

People all over the globe are affected by pneumonia but deaths due to it are highest in Sub-Saharan Asia and South Asia. In recent years, the overall incidence and mortality rate of pneumonia regardless of the utilization of effective vaccines and compelling antibiotics has escalated. Thus, pneumonia remains a disease that needs spry prevention and treatment. The widespread prevalence of pneumonia has caused the research community to come up with a framework that helps detect, diagnose and analyze diseases accurately and promptly. One of the major hurdles faced by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) research community is the lack of publicly available datasets for chest diseases, including pneumonia . Secondly, few of the available datasets are highly imbalanced (normal examples are over sampled, while samples with ailment are in severe minority) making the problem even more challenging. In this article we present a novel framework for the detection of pneumonia. The novelty of the proposed methodology lies in the tackling of class imbalance problem. The Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), specifically a combination of Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Network (DCGAN) and Wasserstein GAN gradient penalty (WGAN-GP) was applied on the minority class ``Pneumonia'' for augmentation, whereas Random Under-Sampling (RUS) was done on the majority class ``No Findings'' to deal with the imbalance problem. The ChestX-Ray8 dataset, one of the biggest datasets, is used to validate the performance of the proposed framework. The learning phase is completed using transfer learning on state-of-the-art deep learning models i.e. ResNet-50, Xception, and VGG-16. Results obtained exceed state-of-the-art.

Sidra Nasir, Muhammad Noman Zahid, Rizwan Ahmed Khan

Retrieval-augmented generation systems struggle with temporal reasoning and evidence fusion when answering complex questions over historical criminal case narratives. Existing approaches either retrieve independently of query semantics or fail to integrate multiple evidence sources coherently. We propose Temporal Context Augmented Retrieval Generation (TCAR-Gen), a framework that combines query-conditioned graph neural networks, temporal evidence fusion, and chain-of-trees reasoning to ground answer generation in retrieved evidence. On the Victorian Crime Diaries benchmark, TCAR-Gen achieves 0.3738 Recall@5, outperforming Vanilla RAG, Temporal RAG, GraphRAG-C, and GraphRAG-T across seven query types including multi-hop reasoning and counterfactual questions. Ablation studies reveal that the context graph, temporal penalty mechanism, and query conditioning are critical components. Cross-model evaluation across five language model (GPT-OSS 20B to TinyLlama 1.1B) demonstrates that TCAR-Gen maintains robust retrieval coverage at smaller model scales, though generation quality degrades substantially with reduced model capacity. Our work shows that explicit temporal modelling and multi-branch evidence fusion are essential for faithful, reasoning-intensive question answering over knowledge-grounded corpora.

Maryam Ahmed, Tooba Bibi, Rizwan Ahmed Khan et al.

The Deep learning (DL) models for diagnosing breast cancer from mammographic images often operate as "black boxes", making it difficult for healthcare professionals to trust and understand their decision-making processes. The study presents an integrated framework combining Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for the enhanced diagnosis of breast cancer using the CBIS-DDSM dataset. The methodology encompasses an elaborate data preprocessing pipeline and advanced data augmentation techniques to counteract dataset limitations and transfer learning using pre-trained networks such as VGG-16, Inception-V3 and ResNet was employed. A focal point of our study is the evaluation of XAI's effectiveness in interpreting model predictions, highlighted by utilizing the Hausdorff measure to assess the alignment between AI-generated explanations and expert annotations quantitatively. This approach is critical for XAI in promoting trustworthiness and ethical fairness in AI-assisted diagnostics. The findings from our research illustrate the effective collaboration between CNNs and XAI in advancing diagnostic methods for breast cancer, thereby facilitating a more seamless integration of advanced AI technologies within clinical settings. By enhancing the interpretability of AI driven decisions, this work lays the groundwork for improved collaboration between AI systems and medical practitioners, ultimately enriching patient care. Furthermore, the implications of our research extended well beyond the current methodologies. It encourages further research into how to combine multimodal data and improve AI explanations to meet the needs of clinical practice.

Zuraiz Baig, Sidra Nasir, Rizwan Ahmed Khan et al.

Cardiac arrhythmias are a leading cause of life-threatening cardiac events, highlighting the urgent need for accurate and timely detection. Electrocardiography (ECG) remains the clinical gold standard for arrhythmia diagnosis; however, manual interpretation is time-consuming, dependent on clinical expertise, and prone to human error. Although deep learning has advanced automated ECG analysis, many existing models abstract away the signal's intrinsic temporal and morphological features, lack interpretability, and are computationally intensive-hindering their deployment on resource-constrained platforms. In this work, we propose two novel lightweight 1D convolutional neural networks, ArrhythmiNet V1 and V2, optimized for efficient, real-time arrhythmia classification on edge devices. Inspired by MobileNet's depthwise separable convolutional design, these models maintain memory footprints of just 302.18 KB and 157.76 KB, respectively, while achieving classification accuracies of 0.99 (V1) and 0.98 (V2) on the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Dataset across five classes: Normal Sinus Rhythm, Left Bundle Branch Block, Right Bundle Branch Block, Atrial Premature Contraction, and Premature Ventricular Contraction. In order to ensure clinical transparency and relevance, we integrate Shapley Additive Explanations and Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping, enabling both local and global interpretability. These techniques highlight physiologically meaningful patterns such as the QRS complex and T-wave that contribute to the model's predictions. We also discuss performance-efficiency trade-offs and address current limitations related to dataset diversity and generalizability. Overall, our findings demonstrate the feasibility of combining interpretability, predictive accuracy, and computational efficiency in practical, wearable, and embedded ECG monitoring systems.

Sidra Nasir, Qamar Abbas, Samita Bai et al.

This article discusses the evolving role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal profession, focusing on its potential to streamline tasks such as document review, research, and contract drafting. However, challenges persist, particularly the occurrence of "hallucinations" in AI models, where they generate inaccurate or misleading information, undermining their reliability in legal contexts. To address this, the article proposes a novel framework combining a mixture of expert systems with a knowledge-based architecture to improve the precision and contextual relevance of AI-driven legal services. This framework utilizes specialized modules, each focusing on specific legal areas, and incorporates structured operational guidelines to enhance decision-making. Additionally, it leverages advanced AI techniques like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Knowledge Graphs (KG), and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) to improve the system's accuracy. The proposed approach demonstrates significant improvements over existing AI models, showcasing enhanced performance in legal tasks and offering a scalable solution to provide more accessible and affordable legal services. The article also outlines the methodology, system architecture, and promising directions for future research in AI applications for the legal sector.

Syed Saim Gardezi, Soyiba Jawed, Mahnoor Khan et al.

A multitude of individuals across the globe grapple with motor disabilities. Neural prosthetics utilizing Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology exhibit promise for improving motor rehabilitation outcomes. The intricate nature of EEG data poses a significant hurdle for current BCI systems. Recently, a qualitative repository of EEG signals tied to both upper and lower limb execution of motor and motor imagery tasks has been unveiled. Despite this, the productivity of the Machine Learning (ML) Models that were trained on this dataset was alarmingly deficient, and the evaluation framework seemed insufficient. To enhance outcomes, robust feature engineering (signal processing) methodologies are implemented. A collection of time domain, frequency domain, and wavelet-derived features was obtained from 16-channel EEG signals, and the Maximum Relevance Minimum Redundancy (MRMR) approach was employed to identify the four most significant features. For classification K Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Tree (DT), and Naïve Bayes (NB) models were implemented with these selected features, evaluating their effectiveness through metrics such as testing accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 Score. By leveraging SVM with a Gaussian Kernel, a remarkable maximum testing accuracy of 92.50% for motor activities and 95.48% for imagery activities is achieved. These results are notably more dependable and gratifying compared to the previous study, where the peak accuracy was recorded at 74.36%. This research work provides an in-depth analysis of the MI Limb EEG dataset and it will help in designing and developing simple, cost-effective and reliable BCI systems for neuro-rehabilitation.

Samita Bai, Sidra Nasir, Rizwan Ahmed Khan et al.

Breast cancer (BC) stands as one of the most common malignancies affecting women worldwide, necessitating advancements in diagnostic methodologies for better clinical outcomes. This article provides a comprehensive exploration of the application of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques in the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies continue to permeate the healthcare sector, particularly in oncology, the need for transparent and interpretable models becomes imperative to enhance clinical decision-making and patient care. This review discusses the integration of various XAI approaches, such as SHAP, LIME, Grad-CAM, and others, with machine learning and deep learning models utilized in breast cancer detection and classification. By investigating the modalities of breast cancer datasets, including mammograms, ultrasounds and their processing with AI, the paper highlights how XAI can lead to more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatment plans. It also examines the challenges in implementing these techniques and the importance of developing standardized metrics for evaluating XAI's effectiveness in clinical settings. Through detailed analysis and discussion, this article aims to highlight the potential of XAI in bridging the gap between complex AI models and practical healthcare applications, thereby fostering trust and understanding among medical professionals and improving patient outcomes.

Shahid Munir Shah, Rizwan Ahmed Khan, Sheeraz Arif et al.

In the last decade, researchers working in the domain of computer vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have beefed up their efforts to come up with the automated framework that not only detects but also identifies stage of breast cancer. The reason for this surge in research activities in this direction are mainly due to advent of robust AI algorithms (deep learning), availability of hardware that can train those robust and complex AI algorithms and accessibility of large enough dataset required for training AI algorithms. Different imaging modalities that have been exploited by researchers to automate the task of breast cancer detection are mammograms, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, histopathological images or any combination of them. This article analyzes these imaging modalities and presents their strengths, limitations and enlists resources from where their datasets can be accessed for research purpose. This article then summarizes AI and computer vision based state-of-the-art methods proposed in the last decade, to detect breast cancer using various imaging modalities. Generally, in this article we have focused on to review frameworks that have reported results using mammograms as it is most widely used breast imaging modality that serves as first test that medical practitioners usually prescribe for the detection of breast cancer. Second reason of focusing on mammogram imaging modalities is the availability of its labeled datasets. Datasets availability is one of the most important aspect for the development of AI based frameworks as such algorithms are data hungry and generally quality of dataset affects performance of AI based algorithms. In a nutshell, this research article will act as a primary resource for the research community working in the field of automated breast imaging analysis.

Shahid Munir Shah, Rizwan Ahmed Khan

In present technological era, healthcare providers generate huge amount of clinical data on daily basis. Generated clinical data is stored digitally in the form of Electronic Health Records (EHR) as a central data repository of hospitals. Data contained in EHR is not only used for the patients' primary care but also for various secondary purposes such as clinical research, automated disease surveillance and clinical audits for quality enhancement. Using EHR data for secondary purposes without consent or in some cases even with consent creates privacy issues for individuals. Secondly, EHR data is also made accessible to various stake holders including different government agencies at various geographical sites through wired or wireless networks. Sharing of EHR across multiples agencies makes it vulnerable to cyber attacks and also makes it difficult to implement strict privacy laws as in some cases data is shared with organization that is governed by specific regional law. Privacy of an individual could be severely affected when their sensitive private information contained in EHR is leaked or exposed to public. Data leak can cause financial losses or an individuals may encounter social boycott if their medical condition is exposed in public. To protect patients personal data from such threats, there exists different privacy regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA and MHR. However, continually evolving state-of-the-art techniques in machine learning, data analytics and hacking are making it even more difficult to completely protect individual's / patient's privacy. In this article, we have systematically examined various secondary uses of EHR with the aim to highlight how these secondary uses effect patients' privacy. Secondly, we have critically analyzed GDPR and highlighted possible areas of improvement, considering escalating use of technology and different secondary uses of EHR.

Jamshed Memon, Maira Sami, Rizwan Ahmed Khan

Given the ubiquity of handwritten documents in human transactions, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of documents have invaluable practical worth. Optical character recognition is a science that enables to translate various types of documents or images into analyzable, editable and searchable data. During last decade, researchers have used artificial intelligence / machine learning tools to automatically analyze handwritten and printed documents in order to convert them into electronic format. The objective of this review paper is to summarize research that has been conducted on character recognition of handwritten documents and to provide research directions. In this Systematic Literature Review (SLR) we collected, synthesized and analyzed research articles on the topic of handwritten OCR (and closely related topics) which were published between year 2000 to 2018. We followed widely used electronic databases by following pre-defined review protocol. Articles were searched using keywords, forward reference searching and backward reference searching in order to search all the articles related to the topic. After carefully following study selection process 142 articles were selected for this SLR. This review article serves the purpose of presenting state of the art results and techniques on OCR and also provide research directions by highlighting research gaps.

Anjum Nazir, Rizwan Ahmed Khan

Advancements in computer networks and communication technologies like software defined networks (SDN), Internet of things (IoT), microservices architecture, cloud computing and network function virtualization (NFV) have opened new fronts and challenges for security experts to combat against modern cyberattacks. Relying on perimeter defense and signature-based network security solutions like Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS) have failed to deliver adequate level of security against new attack vectors such as advance persistent threats, zero days, ransomware, botnets and other forms of targeted attacks. Recent developments in machine learning and cognitive computing have shown great potential to detect unknown and new intrusion events where legacy misuse and anomaly based intrusion detection systems usually fail. In this research study we applied state of the art machine learning algorithms on UNSW-NB15 dataset for potential applicability to detect new attacks. We also proposed a novel wrapper based feature selection technique TS-RF using metaheuristic Tabu Search (TS) algorithm and Random Forest (RF) ensemble classifier. Results obtained by applying proposed feature selection technique i.e. TS-RF on UNSW-NB15 dataset show improvement in overall intrusion detection accuracy while it reduces computation complexity as it removes more than 60% features.

Hamza Sharif, Rizwan Ahmed Khan

Computer vision and machine learning are the linchpin of field of automation. The medicine industry has adopted numerous methods to discover the root causes of many diseases in order to automate detection process. But, the biomarkers of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are still unknown, let alone automating its detection. Studies from the neuroscience domain highlighted the fact that corpus callosum and intracranial brain volume holds significant information for detection of ASD. Such results and studies are not tested and verified by scientists working in the domain of computer vision / machine learning. Thus, in this study we have proposed a machine learning based framework for automatic detection of ASD using features extracted from corpus callosum and intracranial brain volume from ABIDE dataset. Corpus callosum and intracranial brain volume data is obtained from T1-weighted MRI scans. Our proposed framework first calculates weights of features extracted from Corpus callosum and intracranial brain volume data. This step ensures to utilize discriminative capabilities of only those features that will help in robust recognition of ASD. Then, conventional machine learning algorithm (conventional refers to algorithms other than deep learning) is applied on features that are most significant in terms of discriminative capabilities for recognition of ASD. Finally, for benchmarking and to verify potential of deep learning on analyzing neuroimaging data i.e. T1-weighted MRI scans, we have done experiment with state of the art deep learning architecture i.e. VGG16 . We have used transfer learning approach to use already trained VGG16 model for detection of ASD. This is done to help readers understand benefits and bottlenecks of using deep learning approach for analyzing neuroimaging data which is difficult to record in large enough quantity for deep learning.

Rizwan Ahmed Khan, Crenn Arthur, Alexandre Meyer et al.

Computing environment is moving towards human-centered designs instead of computer centered designs and human's tend to communicate wealth of information through affective states or expressions. Traditional Human Computer Interaction (HCI) based systems ignores bulk of information communicated through those affective states and just caters for user's intentional input. Generally, for evaluating and benchmarking different facial expression analysis algorithms, standardized databases are needed to enable a meaningful comparison. In the absence of comparative tests on such standardized databases it is difficult to find relative strengths and weaknesses of different facial expression recognition algorithms. In this article we present a novel video database for Children's Spontaneous facial Expressions (LIRIS-CSE). Proposed video database contains six basic spontaneous facial expressions shown by 12 ethnically diverse children between the ages of 6 and 12 years with mean age of 7.3 years. To the best of our knowledge, this database is first of its kind as it records and shows spontaneous facial expressions of children. Previously there were few database of children expressions and all of them show posed or exaggerated expressions which are different from spontaneous or natural expressions. Thus, this database will be a milestone for human behavior researchers. This database will be a excellent resource for vision community for benchmarking and comparing results. In this article, we have also proposed framework for automatic expression recognition based on convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture with transfer learning approach. Proposed architecture achieved average classification accuracy of 75% on our proposed database i.e. LIRIS-CSE.

Rumaisah Munir, Rizwan Ahmed Khan

Spectral imaging has recently gained traction for face recognition in biometric systems. We investigate the merits of spectral imaging for face recognition and the current challenges that hamper the widespread deployment of spectral sensors for face recognition. The reliability of conventional face recognition systems operating in the visible range is compromised by illumination changes, pose variations and spoof attacks. Recent works have reaped the benefits of spectral imaging to counter these limitations in surveillance activities (defence, airport security checks, etc.). However, the implementation of this technology for biometrics, is still in its infancy due to multiple reasons. We present an overview of the existing work in the domain of spectral imaging for face recognition, different types of modalities and their assessment, availability of public databases for sake of reproducible research as well as evaluation of algorithms, and recent advancements in the field, such as, the use of deep learning-based methods for recognizing faces from spectral images.

Muhammad Shoaib Jaliawala, Rizwan Ahmed Khan

This article presents an extensive literature review of technology based intervention methodologies for individuals facing Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Reviewed methodologies include: contemporary Computer Aided Systems (CAS), Computer Vision Assisted Technologies (CVAT) and Virtual Reality (VR) or Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted interventions. The research over the past decade has provided enough demonstrations that individuals with ASD have a strong interest in technology based interventions, which are useful in both, clinical settings as well as at home and classrooms. Despite showing great promise, research in developing an advanced technology based intervention that is clinically quantitative for ASD is minimal. Moreover, the clinicians are generally not convinced about the potential of the technology based interventions due to non-empirical nature of published results. A major reason behind this lack of acceptability is that a vast majority of studies on distinct intervention methodologies do not follow any specific standard or research design. We conclude from our findings that there remains a gap between the research community of computer science, psychology and neuroscience to develop an AI assisted intervention technology for individuals suffering from ASD. Following the development of a standardized AI based intervention technology, a database needs to be developed, to devise effective AI algorithms.