Julián Luengo

Adrian Peláez-Vegas, Pablo Mesejo, Julián Luengo

Semantic segmentation is one of the most challenging tasks in computer vision. However, in many applications, a frequent obstacle is the lack of labeled images, due to the high cost of pixel-level labeling. In this scenario, it makes sense to approach the problem from a semi-supervised point of view, where both labeled and unlabeled images are exploited. In recent years this line of research has gained much interest and many approaches have been published in this direction. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to provide an overview of the current state of the art in semi-supervised semantic segmentation, offering an updated taxonomy of all existing methods to date. This is complemented by an experimentation with a variety of models representing all the categories of the taxonomy on the most widely used becnhmark datasets in the literature, and a final discussion on the results obtained, the challenges and the most promising lines of future research.

Ignacio Aguilera-Martos, Ángel M. García-Vico, Julián Luengo et al.

The combination of convolutional and recurrent neural networks is a promising framework that allows the extraction of high-quality spatio-temporal features together with its temporal dependencies, which is key for time series prediction problems such as forecasting, classification or anomaly detection, amongst others. In this paper, the TSFEDL library is introduced. It compiles 20 state-of-the-art methods for both time series feature extraction and prediction, employing convolutional and recurrent deep neural networks for its use in several data mining tasks. The library is built upon a set of Tensorflow+Keras and PyTorch modules under the AGPLv3 license. The performance validation of the architectures included in this proposal confirms the usefulness of this Python package.

Iván Sevillano-García, Julián Luengo, Francisco Herrera

As artificial intelligence systems become integral across domains, the demand for explainability grows, the called eXplainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Existing efforts primarily focus on generating and evaluating explanations for black-box models while a critical gap in directly enhancing models remains through these evaluations. It is important to consider the potential of this explanation process to improve model quality with a feedback on training as well. XAI may be used to improve model performance while boosting its explainability. Under this view, this paper introduces Transformation - Selective Hidden Input Evaluation for Learning Dynamics (T-SHIELD), a regularization family designed to improve model quality by hiding features of input, forcing the model to generalize without those features. Within this family, we propose the XAI - SHIELD(X-SHIELD), a regularization for explainable artificial intelligence, which uses explanations to select specific features to hide. In contrast to conventional approaches, X-SHIELD regularization seamlessly integrates into the objective function enhancing model explainability while also improving performance. Experimental validation on benchmark datasets underscores X-SHIELD's effectiveness in improving performance and overall explainability. The improvement is validated through experiments comparing models with and without the X-SHIELD regularization, with further analysis exploring the rationale behind its design choices. This establishes X-SHIELD regularization as a promising pathway for developing reliable artificial intelligence regularization.

Iván Sevillano-García, Julián Luengo, Francisco Herrera

Out-of-Distribution (OOD) detection is a critical task in machine learning, particularly in safety-sensitive applications where model failures can have serious consequences. However, current OOD detection methods often suffer from restrictive distributional assumptions, limited scalability, and a lack of interpretability. To address these challenges, we propose STOOD-X, a two-stage methodology that combines a Statistical nonparametric Test for OOD Detection with eXplainability enhancements. In the first stage, STOOD-X uses feature-space distances and a Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test to identify OOD samples without assuming a specific feature distribution. In the second stage, it generates user-friendly, concept-based visual explanations that reveal the features driving each decision, aligning with the BLUE XAI paradigm. Through extensive experiments on benchmark datasets and multiple architectures, STOOD-X achieves competitive performance against state-of-the-art post hoc OOD detectors, particularly in high-dimensional and complex settings. In addition, its explainability framework enables human oversight, bias detection, and model debugging, fostering trust and collaboration between humans and AI systems. The STOOD-X methodology therefore offers a robust, explainable, and scalable solution for real-world OOD detection tasks.

Anabel Gómez-Ríos, Julián Luengo, Francisco Herrera

Deep learning has outperformed other machine learning algorithms in a variety of tasks, and as a result, it is widely used. However, like other machine learning algorithms, deep learning, and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in particular, perform worse when the data sets present label noise. Therefore, it is important to develop algorithms that help the training of deep networks and their generalization to noise-free test sets. In this paper, we propose a robust training strategy against label noise, called RAFNI, that can be used with any CNN. This algorithm filters and relabels instances of the training set based on the predictions and their probabilities made by the backbone neural network during the training process. That way, this algorithm improves the generalization ability of the CNN on its own. RAFNI consists of three mechanisms: two mechanisms that filter instances and one mechanism that relabels instances. In addition, it does not suppose that the noise rate is known nor does it need to be estimated. We evaluated our algorithm using different data sets of several sizes and characteristics. We also compared it with state-of-the-art models using the CIFAR10 and CIFAR100 benchmarks under different types and rates of label noise and found that RAFNI achieves better results in most cases.

Jacinto Carrasco, Irina Markova, David López et al.

The research in anomaly detection lacks a unified definition of what represents an anomalous instance. Discrepancies in the nature itself of an anomaly lead to multiple paradigms of algorithms design and experimentation. Predictive maintenance is a special case, where the anomaly represents a failure that must be prevented. Related time-series research as outlier and novelty detection or time-series classification does not apply to the concept of an anomaly in this field, because they are not single points which have not been seen previously and may not be precisely annotated. Moreover, due to the lack of annotated anomalous data, many benchmarks are adapted from supervised scenarios. To address these issues, we generalise the concept of positive and negative instances to intervals to be able to evaluate unsupervised anomaly detection algorithms. We also preserve the imbalance scheme for evaluation through the proposal of the Preceding Window ROC, a generalisation for the calculation of ROC curves for time-series scenarios. We also adapt the mechanism from a established time-series anomaly detection benchmark to the proposed generalisations to reward early detection. Therefore, the proposal represents a flexible evaluation framework for the different scenarios. To show the usefulness of this definition, we include a case study of Big Data algorithms with a real-world time-series problem provided by the company ArcelorMittal, and compare the proposal with an evaluation method.

S. Tabik, A. Gómez-Ríos, J. L. Martín-Rodríguez et al.

Currently, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), one of the most infectious diseases in the 21st century, is diagnosed using RT-PCR testing, CT scans and/or Chest X-Ray (CXR) images. CT (Computed Tomography) scanners and RT-PCR testing are not available in most medical centers and hence in many cases CXR images become the most time/cost effective tool for assisting clinicians in making decisions. Deep learning neural networks have a great potential for building COVID-19 triage systems and detecting COVID-19 patients, especially patients with low severity. Unfortunately, current databases do not allow building such systems as they are highly heterogeneous and biased towards severe cases. This paper is three-fold: (i) we demystify the high sensitivities achieved by most recent COVID-19 classification models, (ii) under a close collaboration with Hospital Universitario Clínico San Cecilio, Granada, Spain, we built COVIDGR-1.0, a homogeneous and balanced database that includes all levels of severity, from normal with Positive RT-PCR, Mild, Moderate to Severe. COVIDGR-1.0 contains 426 positive and 426 negative PA (PosteroAnterior) CXR views and (iii) we propose COVID Smart Data based Network (COVID-SDNet) methodology for improving the generalization capacity of COVID-classification models. Our approach reaches good and stable results with an accuracy of $97.72\% \pm 0.95 \%$, $86.90\% \pm 3.20\%$, $61.80\% \pm 5.49\%$ in severe, moderate and mild COVID-19 severity levels (Paper accepted for publication in Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics). Our approach could help in the early detection of COVID-19. COVIDGR-1.0 along with the severity level labels are available to the scientific community through this link https://dasci.es/es/transferencia/open-data/covidgr/.

José-Ramón Cano, Julián Luengo, Salvador García

The monotonic ordinal classification has increased the interest of researchers and practitioners within machine learning community in the last years. In real applications, the problems with monotonicity constraints are very frequent. To construct predictive monotone models from those problems, many classifiers require as input a data set satisfying the monotonicity relationships among all samples. Changing the class labels of the data set (relabelling) is useful for this. Relabelling is assumed to be an important building block for the construction of monotone classifiers and it is proved that it can improve the predictive performance. In this paper, we will address the construction of monotone datasets considering as noise the cases that do not meet the monotonicity restrictions. For the first time in the specialized literature, we propose the use of noise filtering algorithms in a preprocessing stage with a double goal: to increase both the monotonicity index of the models and the accuracy of the predictions for different monotonic classifiers. The experiments are performed over 12 datasets coming from classification and regression problems and show that our scheme improves the prediction capabilities of the monotonic classifiers instead of being applied to original and relabeled datasets. In addition, we have included the analysis of noise filtering process in the particular case of wine quality classification to understand its effect in the predictive models generated.

Anabel Gómez-Ríos, Siham Tabik, Julián Luengo et al.

The recognition of coral species based on underwater texture images pose a significant difficulty for machine learning algorithms, due to the three following challenges embedded in the nature of this data: 1) datasets do not include information about the global structure of the coral; 2) several species of coral have very similar characteristics; and 3) defining the spatial borders between classes is difficult as many corals tend to appear together in groups. For this reason, the classification of coral species has always required an aid from a domain expert. The objective of this paper is to develop an accurate classification model for coral texture images. Current datasets contain a large number of imbalanced classes, while the images are subject to inter-class variation. We have analyzed 1) several Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures, 2) data augmentation techniques and 3) transfer learning. We have achieved the state-of-the art accuracies using different variations of ResNet on the two current coral texture datasets, EILAT and RSMAS.

Diego García-Gil, Julián Luengo, Salvador García et al.

In any knowledge discovery process the value of extracted knowledge is directly related to the quality of the data used. Big Data problems, generated by massive growth in the scale of data observed in recent years, also follow the same dictate. A common problem affecting data quality is the presence of noise, particularly in classification problems, where label noise refers to the incorrect labeling of training instances, and is known to be a very disruptive feature of data. However, in this Big Data era, the massive growth in the scale of the data poses a challenge to traditional proposals created to tackle noise, as they have difficulties coping with such a large amount of data. New algorithms need to be proposed to treat the noise in Big Data problems, providing high quality and clean data, also known as Smart Data. In this paper, two Big Data preprocessing approaches to remove noisy examples are proposed: an homogeneous ensemble and an heterogeneous ensemble filter, with special emphasis in their scalability and performance traits. The obtained results show that these proposals enable the practitioner to efficiently obtain a Smart Dataset from any Big Data classification problem.