Tamer Khattab

Yalda Zafari, Roaa Elalfy, Mohamed Mabrok et al.

Early and accurate interpretation of screening mammograms is essential for effective breast cancer detection, yet it remains a complex challenge due to subtle imaging findings and diagnostic ambiguity. Many existing AI approaches fall short by focusing on single view inputs or single-task outputs, limiting their clinical utility. To address these limitations, we propose a novel multi-view, multitask hybrid deep learning framework that processes all four standard mammography views and jointly predicts diagnostic labels and BI-RADS scores for each breast. Our architecture integrates a hybrid CNN VSSM backbone, combining convolutional encoders for rich local feature extraction with Visual State Space Models (VSSMs) to capture global contextual dependencies. To improve robustness and interpretability, we incorporate a gated attention-based fusion module that dynamically weights information across views, effectively handling cases with missing data. We conduct extensive experiments across diagnostic tasks of varying complexity, benchmarking our proposed hybrid models against baseline CNN architectures and VSSM models in both single task and multi task learning settings. Across all tasks, the hybrid models consistently outperform the baselines. In the binary BI-RADS 1 vs. 5 classification task, the shared hybrid model achieves an AUC of 0.9967 and an F1 score of 0.9830. For the more challenging ternary classification, it attains an F1 score of 0.7790, while in the five-class BI-RADS task, the best F1 score reaches 0.4904. These results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid framework and underscore both the potential and limitations of multitask learning for improving diagnostic performance and enabling clinically meaningful mammography analysis.

Mohamed Hamad, Muhammad Khan, Tamer Khattab et al.

A key challenge in ischemic stroke diagnosis using medical imaging is the accurate localization of the occluded vessel. Current machine learning methods in focus primarily on lesion segmentation, with limited work on vessel localization. In this study, we introduce Stroke Locus Net, an end-to-end deep learning pipeline for detection, segmentation, and occluded vessel localization using only MRI scans. The proposed system combines a segmentation branch using nnUNet for lesion detection with an arterial atlas for vessel mapping and identification, and a generation branch using pGAN to synthesize MRA images from MRI. Our implementation demonstrates promising results in localizing occluded vessels on stroke-affected T1 MRI scans, with potential for faster and more informed stroke diagnosis.

Amirhossein Taherpour, Abbas Taherpour, Tamer Khattab

This paper presents a feature-based Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework for quantum network routing, combining belief-state planning with Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to address partial observability, decoherence, and scalability challenges in dynamic quantum systems. Our approach encodes complex quantum network dynamics, including entanglement degradation and time-varying channel noise, into a low-dimensional feature space, enabling efficient belief updates and scalable policy learning. The core of our framework is a hybrid GNN-POMDP architecture that processes graph-structured representations of entangled links to learn routing policies, coupled with a noise-adaptive mechanism that fuses POMDP belief updates with GNN outputs for robust decision making. We provide a theoretical analysis establishing guarantees for belief convergence, policy improvement, and robustness to noise. Experiments on simulated quantum networks with up to 100 nodes demonstrate significant improvements in routing fidelity and entanglement delivery rates compared to state-of-the-art baselines, particularly under high decoherence and nonstationary conditions.

Amirhossein Taherpour, Abbas Taherpour, Tamer Khattab

We introduce a comprehensive framework for the detection and demodulation of covert electromagnetic signals using solid-state spin sensors. Our approach, named RAPID, is a two-stage hybrid strategy that leverages nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers to operate below the classical noise floor employing a robust adaptive policy via imitation and distillation. We first formulate the joint detection and estimation task as a unified stochastic optimal control problem, optimizing a composite Bayesian risk objective under realistic physical constraints. The RAPID algorithm solves this by first computing a robust, non-adaptive baseline protocol grounded in the quantum Fisher information matrix (QFIM), and then using this baseline to warm-start an online, adaptive policy learned via deep reinforcement learning (Soft Actor-Critic). This method dynamically optimizes control pulses, interrogation times, and measurement bases to maximize information gain while actively suppressing non-Markovian noise and decoherence. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the protocol achieves a significant sensitivity gain over static methods, maintains high estimation precision in correlated noise environments, and, when applied to sensor arrays, enables coherent quantum beamforming that achieves Heisenberg-like scaling in precision. This work establishes a theoretically rigorous and practically viable pathway for deploying quantum sensors in security-critical applications such as electronic warfare and covert surveillance.

Amirhossein Taherpour, Abbas Taherpour, Tamer Khattab

We propose a joint learning framework for Byzantine-resilient spectrum sensing and secure intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)--assisted opportunistic access under channel state information (CSI) uncertainty. The sensing stage performs logit-domain Bayesian updates with trimmed aggregation and attention-weighted consensus, and the base station (BS) fuses network beliefs with a conservative minimum rule, preserving detection accuracy under a bounded number of Byzantine users. Conditioned on the sensing outcome, we pose downlink design as sum mean-squared error (MSE) minimization under transmit-power and signal-leakage constraints and jointly optimize the BS precoder, IRS phase shifts, and user equalizers. With partial (or known) CSI, we develop an augmented-Lagrangian alternating algorithm with projected updates and provide provable sublinear convergence, with accelerated rates under mild local curvature. With unknown CSI, we perform constrained Bayesian optimization (BO) in a geometry-aware low-dimensional latent space using Gaussian process (GP) surrogates; we prove regret bounds for a constrained upper confidence bound (UCB) variant of the BO module, and demonstrate strong empirical performance of the implemented procedure. Simulations across diverse network conditions show higher detection probability at fixed false-alarm rate under adversarial attacks, large reductions in sum MSE for honest users, strong suppression of eavesdropper signal power, and fast convergence. The framework offers a practical path to secure opportunistic communication that adapts to CSI availability while coherently coordinating sensing and transmission through joint learning.

Osama Hardan, Omar Elshenhabi, Tamer Khattab et al.

Vision Mamba models promise transformer-level performance at linear computational cost, but their reliance on serializing 2D images into 1D sequences introduces a critical, yet overlooked, design choice: the patch scan order. In medical imaging, where modalities like brain MRI contain strong anatomical priors, this choice is non-trivial. This paper presents the first systematic study of how scan order impacts MRI segmentation. We introduce Multi-Scan 2D (MS2D), a parameter-free module for Mamba-based architectures that facilitates exploring diverse scan paths without additional computational cost. We conduct a large-scale benchmark of 21 scan strategies on three public datasets (BraTS 2020, ISLES 2022, LGG), covering over 70,000 slices. Our analysis shows conclusively that scan order is a statistically significant factor (Friedman test: $χ^{2}_{20}=43.9, p=0.0016$), with performance varying by as much as 27 Dice points. Spatially contiguous paths -- simple horizontal and vertical rasters -- consistently outperform disjointed diagonal scans. We conclude that scan order is a powerful, cost-free hyperparameter, and provide an evidence-based shortlist of optimal paths to maximize the performance of Mamba models in medical imaging.

Dawei Du, Longyin Wen, Pengfei Zhu et al.

Crowd counting on the drone platform is an interesting topic in computer vision, which brings new challenges such as small object inference, background clutter and wide viewpoint. However, there are few algorithms focusing on crowd counting on the drone-captured data due to the lack of comprehensive datasets. To this end, we collect a large-scale dataset and organize the Vision Meets Drone Crowd Counting Challenge (VisDrone-CC2020) in conjunction with the 16th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2020) to promote the developments in the related fields. The collected dataset is formed by $3,360$ images, including $2,460$ images for training, and $900$ images for testing. Specifically, we manually annotate persons with points in each video frame. There are $14$ algorithms from $15$ institutes submitted to the VisDrone-CC2020 Challenge. We provide a detailed analysis of the evaluation results and conclude the challenge. More information can be found at the website: \url{http://www.aiskyeye.com/}.

Muhammad Shehab, Bekir S. Ciftler, Tamer Khattab et al.

In this work, we examine an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scenario with the aim of maximizing the sum rate of users. The optimization problem at the IRS is quite complicated, and non-convex, since it requires the tuning of the phase shift reflection matrix. Driven by the rising deployment of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques that are capable of coping with solving non-convex optimization problems, we employ DRL to predict and optimally tune the IRS phase shift matrices. Simulation results reveal that IRS assisted NOMA based on our utilized DRL scheme achieves high sum rate compared to OMA based one, and as the transmit power increases, the capability of serving more users increases. Furthermore, results show that imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) has a deleterious impact on the data rate of users performing SIC. As the imperfection increases by ten times, the rate decreases by more than 10%.

Reza Shakeri, Mohammed Ali Al-Garadi, Ahmed Badawy et al.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have recently rapidly grown to facilitate a wide range of innovative applications that can fundamentally change the way cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are designed. CPSs are a modern generation of systems with synergic cooperation between computational and physical potentials that can interact with humans through several new mechanisms. The main advantages of using UAVs in CPS application is their exceptional features, including their mobility, dynamism, effortless deployment, adaptive altitude, agility, adjustability, and effective appraisal of real-world functions anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, from the technology perspective, UAVs are predicted to be a vital element of the development of advanced CPSs. Therefore, in this survey, we aim to pinpoint the most fundamental and important design challenges of multi-UAV systems for CPS applications. We highlight key and versatile aspects that span the coverage and tracking of targets and infrastructure objects, energy-efficient navigation, and image analysis using machine learning for fine-grained CPS applications. Key prototypes and testbeds are also investigated to show how these practical technologies can facilitate CPS applications. We present and propose state-of-the-art algorithms to address design challenges with both quantitative and qualitative methods and map these challenges with important CPS applications to draw insightful conclusions on the challenges of each application. Finally, we summarize potential new directions and ideas that could shape future research in these areas.

Syed Awais Wahab Shah, Tamer Khattab, Muhammad Zeeshan Shakir et al.

The densification of small-cell base stations in a 5G architecture is a promising approach to enhance the coverage area and facilitate the ever increasing capacity demand of end users. However, the bottleneck is an intelligent management of a backhaul/fronthaul network for these small-cell base stations. This involves efficient association and placement of the backhaul hubs that connects these small-cells with the core network. Terrestrial hubs suffer from an inefficient non line of sight link limitations and unavailability of a proper infrastructure in an urban area. Seeing the popularity of flying platforms, we employ here an idea of using networked flying platform (NFP) such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones, unmanned balloons flying at different altitudes, as aerial backhaul hubs. The association problem of these NFP-hubs and small-cell base stations is formulated considering backhaul link and NFP related limitations such as maximum number of supported links and bandwidth. Then, this paper presents an efficient and distributed solution of the designed problem, which performs a greedy search in order to maximize the sum rate of the overall network. A favorable performance is observed via a numerical comparison of our proposed method with optimal exhaustive search algorithm in terms of sum rate and run-time speed.

Ahmed El Shafie, Tamer Khattab, Hussien Saad et al.

In this paper, we consider a cognitive setting under the context of cooperative communications, where the cognitive radio (CR) user is assumed to be a self-organized relay for the network. The CR user and the PU are assumed to be energy harvesters. The CR user cooperatively relays some of the undelivered packets of the primary user (PU). Specifically, the CR user stores a fraction of the undelivered primary packets in a relaying queue (buffer). It manages the flow of the undelivered primary packets to its relaying queue using the appropriate actions over time slots. Moreover, it has the decision of choosing the used queue for channel accessing at idle time slots (slots where the PU's queue is empty). It is assumed that one data packet transmission dissipates one energy packet. The optimal policy changes according to the primary and CR users arrival rates to the data and energy queues as well as the channels connectivity. The CR user saves energy for the PU by taking the responsibility of relaying the undelivered primary packets. It optimally organizes its own energy packets to maximize its payoff as time progresses.