NAApr 13, 2013
A connection between filter stabilization and eddy viscosity modelsMaxim A. Olshanskii, Xin Xiong
Recently, a new approach for the stabilization of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for higher Reynolds numbers was introduced based on the nonlinear differential filtering of solutions on every time step of a discrete scheme. In this paper, the stabilization is shown to be equivalent to a certain eddy-viscosity model in LES. This allows a refined analysis and further understanding of desired filter properties. We also consider the application of the filtering in a projection (pressure correction) method, the standard splitting algorithm for time integration of the incompressible fluid equations. The paper proves an estimate on the convergence of the filtered numerical solution to the corresponding DNS solution.
AIMay 27
VeriTrip: A Verifiable Benchmark for Travel Planning Agents over Unstructured Web CorporaYuting Xu, Jiayi Tian, Jian Liang et al.
Existing benchmarks have laid the foundation for travel planning agents by establishing API-centric paradigms. However, as the capabilities of Autonomous Agents continue to advance, their evaluation must evolve beyond simple tool execution toward handling the inherent complexities of the open web. Current benchmarks bypass core cognitive hurdles: they fail to account for information noise, ignore multi-source factual contradictions, and overlook the necessity of grounding visual perception into logical planning. We introduce VeriTrip, a verifiable benchmark designed to meet the increasing demands for agent robustness and reliability. VeriTrip shifts the evaluation focus to evidence-grounded reasoning over unstructured multimodal web corpora. It establishes a Multimodal Retrieval Base (MRB) derived from real-world sources, forcing agents to autonomously orchestrate queries across heterogeneous data. A synchronized Verifiable Knowledge Base (VKB) enables a cell-wise verification protocol that precisely quantifies factual reliability, distinguishing systematic reasoning failures from parametric hallucinations. Our evaluations across leading MLLMs reveal a critical \textit{retrieval-reasoning trade-off}: the cognitive load of autonomous retrieval significantly erodes instruction retention. VeriTrip provides the rigorous foundation necessary for the next generation of planning agents capable of operating in unconstrained, multimodal environments.
LGSep 12, 2023
Distributionally Robust Transfer LearningXin Xiong, Zijian Guo, Tianxi Cai
Many existing transfer learning methods rely on leveraging information from source data that closely resembles the target data. However, this approach often overlooks valuable knowledge that may be present in different yet potentially related auxiliary samples. When dealing with a limited amount of target data and a diverse range of source models, our paper introduces a novel approach, Distributionally Robust Optimization for Transfer Learning (TransDRO), that breaks free from strict similarity constraints. TransDRO is designed to optimize the most adversarial loss within an uncertainty set, defined as a collection of target populations generated as a convex combination of source distributions that guarantee excellent prediction performances for the target data. TransDRO effectively bridges the realms of transfer learning and distributional robustness prediction models. We establish the identifiability of TransDRO and its interpretation as a weighted average of source models closest to the baseline model. We also show that TransDRO achieves a faster convergence rate than the model fitted with the target data. Our comprehensive numerical studies and analysis of multi-institutional electronic health records data using TransDRO further substantiate the robustness and accuracy of TransDRO, highlighting its potential as a powerful tool in transfer learning applications.
CVMay 19, 2024Code
AdaAugment: A Tuning-Free and Adaptive Approach to Enhance Data AugmentationSuorong Yang, Peijia Li, Xin Xiong et al.
Data augmentation (DA) is widely employed to improve the generalization performance of deep models. However, most existing DA methods employ augmentation operations with fixed or random magnitudes throughout the training process. While this fosters data diversity, it can also inevitably introduce uncontrolled variability in augmented data, which could potentially cause misalignment with the evolving training status of the target models. Both theoretical and empirical findings suggest that this misalignment increases the risks of both underfitting and overfitting. To address these limitations, we propose AdaAugment, an innovative and tuning-free adaptive augmentation method that leverages reinforcement learning to dynamically and adaptively adjust augmentation magnitudes for individual training samples based on real-time feedback from the target network. Specifically, AdaAugment features a dual-model architecture consisting of a policy network and a target network, which are jointly optimized to adapt augmentation magnitudes in accordance with the model's training progress effectively. The policy network optimizes the variability within the augmented data, while the target network utilizes the adaptively augmented samples for training. These two networks are jointly optimized and mutually reinforce each other. Extensive experiments across benchmark datasets and deep architectures demonstrate that AdaAugment consistently outperforms other state-of-the-art DA methods in effectiveness while maintaining remarkable efficiency. Code is available at https://github.com/Jackbrocp/AdaAugment.
IVMay 15
Dynamic resolution switching for live streamingXin Xiong, Yixu Chen, Hai Wei et al.
Conventional adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming systems typically rely on static bitrate ladders to optimize Quality of Experience (QoE). While operationally simple, this "one-size-fits-all" approach neglects content-specific characteristics, often compromising streaming efficiency. Per-title optimization methods address this by predicting the rate-distortion convex hull directly from the source content, but their reliance on pre-encoding source analysis can limit their applicability to live streaming. Moreover, the objective video quality metrics (VQMs) they rely on are optimized for overall correlation with subjective scores rather than cross-over accuracy, often yielding inaccurate cross-over predictions and suboptimal ladder construction. To overcome both limitations, we introduce a Dynamic Resolution Switching (DRS) framework for live streaming that remains fully compatible with existing streaming protocols. Our approach augments static ladders with strategically selected representations guided by user bandwidth distributions and cross-over regions. The quality of these representations is then analyzed in real time to construct dynamic ladders. Central to this framework is a lightweight, bitstream-based VQM that ensures computational efficiency while maximizing the accuracy of subjective resolution cross-over prediction through training on Pairwise Comparison (PC) datasets. At each bitrate, the VQM evaluates all candidate representations to identify the resolution maximizing the quality score. This decision process, operating at a configurable granularity (e.g., per segment), drives the dynamic resolution switching mechanism specifically optimized for the metric. Experimental results validate the approach, demonstrating a significant performance gain (approximately 9% BD-rate reduction under the proposed VQM) while maintaining practical feasibility for live streaming.
MLSep 12, 2024
Federated One-Shot Ensemble ClusteringRui Duan, Xin Xiong, Jueyi Liu et al.
Cluster analysis across multiple institutions poses significant challenges due to data-sharing restrictions. To overcome these limitations, we introduce the Federated One-shot Ensemble Clustering (FONT) algorithm, a novel solution tailored for multi-site analyses under such constraints. FONT requires only a single round of communication between sites and ensures privacy by exchanging only fitted model parameters and class labels. The algorithm combines locally fitted clustering models into a data-adaptive ensemble, making it broadly applicable to various clustering techniques and robust to differences in cluster proportions across sites. Our theoretical analysis validates the effectiveness of the data-adaptive weights learned by FONT, and simulation studies demonstrate its superior performance compared to existing benchmark methods. We applied FONT to identify subgroups of patients with rheumatoid arthritis across two health systems, revealing improved consistency of patient clusters across sites, while locally fitted clusters proved less transferable. FONT is particularly well-suited for real-world applications with stringent communication and privacy constraints, offering a scalable and practical solution for multi-site clustering.
AIFeb 12, 2025
Representation Learning to Advance Multi-institutional Studies with Electronic Health Record DataDoudou Zhou, Han Tong, Linshanshan Wang et al.
The adoption of EHRs has expanded opportunities to leverage data-driven algorithms in clinical care and research. A major bottleneck in effectively conducting multi-institutional EHR studies is the data heterogeneity across systems with numerous codes that either do not exist or represent different clinical concepts across institutions. The need for data privacy further limits the feasibility of including multi-institutional patient-level data required to study similarities and differences across patient subgroups. To address these challenges, we developed the GAME algorithm. Tested and validated across 7 institutions and 2 languages, GAME integrates data in several levels: (1) at the institutional level with knowledge graphs to establish relationships between codes and existing knowledge sources, providing the medical context for standard codes and their relationship to each other; (2) between institutions, leveraging language models to determine the relationships between institution-specific codes with established standard codes; and (3) quantifying the strength of the relationships between codes using a graph attention network. Jointly trained embeddings are created using transfer and federated learning to preserve data privacy. In this study, we demonstrate the applicability of GAME in selecting relevant features as inputs for AI-driven algorithms in a range of conditions, e.g., heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis. We then highlight the application of GAME harmonized multi-institutional EHR data in a study of Alzheimer's disease outcomes and suicide risk among patients with mental health disorders, without sharing patient-level data outside individual institutions.
IVFeb 15, 2024
Spatiotemporal Disentanglement of Arteriovenous Malformations in Digital Subtraction AngiographyKathleen Baur, Xin Xiong, Erickson Torio et al. · harvard
Although Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA) is the most important imaging for visualizing cerebrovascular anatomy, its interpretation by clinicians remains difficult. This is particularly true when treating arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), where entangled vasculature connecting arteries and veins needs to be carefully identified.The presented method aims to enhance DSA image series by highlighting critical information via automatic classification of vessels using a combination of two learning models: An unsupervised machine learning method based on Independent Component Analysis that decomposes the phases of flow and a convolutional neural network that automatically delineates the vessels in image space. The proposed method was tested on clinical DSA images series and demonstrated efficient differentiation between arteries and veins that provides a viable solution to enhance visualizations for clinical use.
LGMay 27, 2023
GIMM: InfoMin-Max for Automated Graph Contrastive LearningXin Xiong, Furao Shen, Xiangyu Wang et al.
Graph contrastive learning (GCL) shows great potential in unsupervised graph representation learning. Data augmentation plays a vital role in GCL, and its optimal choice heavily depends on the downstream task. Many GCL methods with automated data augmentation face the risk of insufficient information as they fail to preserve the essential information necessary for the downstream task. To solve this problem, we propose InfoMin-Max for automated Graph contrastive learning (GIMM), which prevents GCL from encoding redundant information and losing essential information. GIMM consists of two major modules: (1) automated graph view generator, which acquires the approximation of InfoMin's optimal views through adversarial training without requiring task-relevant information; (2) view comparison, which learns an excellent encoder by applying InfoMax to view representations. To the best of our knowledge, GIMM is the first method that combines the InfoMin and InfoMax principles in GCL. Besides, GIMM introduces randomness to augmentation, thus stabilizing the model against perturbations. Extensive experiments on unsupervised and semi-supervised learning for node and graph classification demonstrate the superiority of our GIMM over state-of-the-art GCL methods with automated and manual data augmentation.
CVOct 1, 2020
Deformable Kernel Convolutional Network for Video Extreme Super-ResolutionXuan Xu, Xin Xiong, Jinge Wang et al.
Video super-resolution, which attempts to reconstruct high-resolution video frames from their corresponding low-resolution versions, has received increasingly more attention in recent years. Most existing approaches opt to use deformable convolution to temporally align neighboring frames and apply traditional spatial attention mechanism (convolution based) to enhance reconstructed features. However, such spatial-only strategies cannot fully utilize temporal dependency among video frames. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning based VSR algorithm, named Deformable Kernel Spatial Attention Network (DKSAN). Thanks to newly designed Deformable Kernel Convolution Alignment (DKC_Align) and Deformable Kernel Spatial Attention (DKSA) modules, DKSAN can better exploit both spatial and temporal redundancies to facilitate the information propagation across different layers. We have tested DKSAN on AIM2020 Video Extreme Super-Resolution Challenge to super-resolve videos with a scale factor as large as 16. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed DKSAN can achieve both better subjective and objective performance compared with the existing state-of-the-art EDVR on Vid3oC and IntVID datasets.
CVSep 14, 2020
AIM 2020 Challenge on Video Extreme Super-Resolution: Methods and ResultsDario Fuoli, Zhiwu Huang, Shuhang Gu et al.
This paper reviews the video extreme super-resolution challenge associated with the AIM 2020 workshop at ECCV 2020. Common scaling factors for learned video super-resolution (VSR) do not go beyond factor 4. Missing information can be restored well in this region, especially in HR videos, where the high-frequency content mostly consists of texture details. The task in this challenge is to upscale videos with an extreme factor of 16, which results in more serious degradations that also affect the structural integrity of the videos. A single pixel in the low-resolution (LR) domain corresponds to 256 pixels in the high-resolution (HR) domain. Due to this massive information loss, it is hard to accurately restore the missing information. Track 1 is set up to gauge the state-of-the-art for such a demanding task, where fidelity to the ground truth is measured by PSNR and SSIM. Perceptually higher quality can be achieved in trade-off for fidelity by generating plausible high-frequency content. Track 2 therefore aims at generating visually pleasing results, which are ranked according to human perception, evaluated by a user study. In contrast to single image super-resolution (SISR), VSR can benefit from additional information in the temporal domain. However, this also imposes an additional requirement, as the generated frames need to be consistent along time.
CVNov 1, 2019
Rotation Invariant Point Cloud Classification: Where Local Geometry Meets Global TopologyChen Zhao, Jiaqi Yang, Xin Xiong et al.
Point cloud analysis is a fundamental task in 3D computer vision. Most previous works have conducted experiments on synthetic datasets with well-aligned data; while real-world point clouds are often not pre-aligned. How to achieve rotation invariance remains an open problem in point cloud analysis. To meet this challenge, we propose a novel approach toward achieving rotation-invariant (RI) representations by combining local geometry with global topology. In our local-global-representation (LGR)-Net, we have designed a two-branch network where one stream encodes local geometric RI features and the other encodes global topology-preserving RI features. Motivated by the observation that local geometry and global topology have different yet complementary RI responses in varying regions, two-branch RI features are fused by an innovative multi-layer perceptron (MLP) based attention module. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first principled approach toward adaptively combining global and local information under the context of RI point cloud analysis. Extensive experiments have demonstrated that our LGR-Net achieves the state-of-the-art performance on various rotation-augmented versions of ModelNet40, ShapeNet, ScanObjectNN, and S3DIS.