MLKD

Ongoing dissertations

Using graph embeddings to explore deep neural network architectures Supervised by Arlindo L. Oliveira and authored by José CarreiraConvolutional neural networks and vision transformers represent the state of the art in artificial neural network (ANN) models for vision problems, such as classification, segmentation, and object detection. Many different architectures exist, that exhibit significant variations in performance, complexity and training cost. Using the appropriate transformations, it is possible to generate graph (or hypergraph) representations of deep neural network architectures, and these representations can be embedded into appropriate spaces that may be more amenable to performance quantification. This dissertation will explore the idea that graph embeddings of deep neural network architectures (and, possibly, weights) can be used to explore the architecture space in more effective ways than is possible today. Requisites: The student should have significant programming experience, and practical knowledge of machine learning languages and environments, such as PyTorch or TensorFlow. Notes: The work will be be developed in cooperation with research groups from the University of Tokyo and the Hong Kong Polytechnic, which have significant expertise in the graph embedding techniques that will be used in this work. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include four DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers, eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S and eight NVIDIA 64GB Tesla A100, among other computing servers.
Deep neural network architectures for dual process computation Supervised by Arlindo L. Oliveira and authored by Guilherme CostaDual process theories have been used to explain the different modes of behavior of the human brain when processing information. These theories became popular with the work of Kaheman, Thinking Fast and Slow, but they are based on decades of experimental evidence that the human brain works in two different modes. System 1 processes large amounts of visual and sensory information, efficiently and unconsciously. For instance, face and object recognition, speech processing and many other automatic functions are performed effortlessly by the human brain, using system 1. Other tasks require conscious effort, like answering complex riddles, executing non-trivial arithmetic operations of planning unfamiliar tasks. These tasks are performed by system 2. Existing systems, like convolutional neural networks, for vision, or transformers, for natural language processing, behave very much like system 1 in the human brain: they perform fast, high-throughput, processing of high-dimensional information, in an unconscious way. This dissertation will be focused on the design of deep neural network architectures that can be used to emulate the dual process computation that characterizes the human brain and also on the relation of dual process architectures and consciousness. Requisites: The student should have significant programming experience, and practical knowledge of machine learning languages and environments, such as PyTorch or TensorFlow. He/she should also have interest in developing the understanding of neuroscience and human psychology. Notes: The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include four DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers, eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S and eight NVIDIA 64GB Tesla A100, among other computing servers.
Stenosis detection in coronary X-ray angiographies Supervised by Arlindo L. Oliveira and Miguel Menezes and authored by Tomás Nunes Automatic processing of images from coronary X-ray angiographies using deep learning techniques has been explored, and the results show that it is possible to perform high-quality segmentation of relevant coronary arteries. Building on top of existing segmentation methods, based on deep convolutional neural networks, this dissertation will be focused on the estimation of the value of the instantaneous wave-free ratio (iFR) and/or the Fractional Flow Reserve (FFR) index from segmented images. The objective is to develop a methodology that can estimate the value of the iFR using non-invasive procedures and that has sufficient sensitivity to avoid the need for invasive measurement methods, such as the insertion of a guidewire with a pressure sensor inserted through a coronary catheter. Estimating the iFR and the FFR indexes is a difficult task, since imaging data, even after segmentation, will provide insufficient information, in many cases. Exploration of the possible tradeoffs between positive predictive value and recall will play an essential role in the identification of the best approach. Co-supervisors: Miguel Nobre Menezes (20%), João Lourenço Silva (40%) Requisites: The student should have significant programming experience, and practical knowledge of machine learning languages and environments, such as PyTorch or TensorFlow. He/she should also have interest in developing the understanding of medical image processing and cardiology. Notes: This work will be developed in cooperation with the school of department of cardiology of the School of Nedicine of the University of Lisbon. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include four DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers, eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S and eight NVIDIA 64GB Tesla A100, among other computing servers.
Operation log monitoring using machine learningSupervised by Arlindo L. Oliveira and Fernando Silva authored by José VelezTraditional monitoring techniques may no longer be able to handle the complexity of modern applications, infrastructures and environments. These do not make the best use of the massive amounts of data being generated, thus several alarms are created that are not necessarily indicative of a new incident. The main objective of this thesis is to improve the monitoring and alarm generation by applying different Machine Learning algorithms and techniques with the rich and vast amount of data, to accurately detect complex problems even if they are outside the boundaries of the monitored software, which is common in modern architectures such as the Micro Service. The proposed work is framed within a critical IT application inside an international organization, in order to provide business and research value by solving a real world modern problem. The case study in question, consists in developing a monitoring solution using state of the art production Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, based on the modern Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) Platforms, to detect anomalies and generate reliable alarms for complex faults in HERMES, a critical application of EDP.
Deep learning when data is scarceSupervised by Arlindo Manuel Limede de Oliveira and authored by Ana Pimenta AlvesCurrent deep learning models require enormous amounts of data to be trained. Recent studies by DeepMind show that even models like GPT-3, which is trained with 300 billion tokens, may still be “significantly undertrained”. Simply gathering more data to keep increasing the models’ performance is not biologically reasonable (as humans don’t need such quantities of data to learn), is not possible for some tasks (where obtaining more data is very expensive) and widens the gap between the researchers with the most resources and the rest of the community. There are several approaches that try to avoid this data requirement: few shot learning, self-supervision, using pre-trained models, and loss smoothing. The objective of this dissertation is to compare these approaches and analyze in particular their relative performance per dataset size. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include two DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers and eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S, among other machines. The work will be developed using the Pytorch or TensorFlow programming platforms for machine learning and the Observable platform for data processing. The selected student will work within the scope of the Magellan project, and have access to the sources of data and financial resources made available by the project.
Data fusion and object recognition from sensor dataSupervised by Arlindo Manuel Limede de Oliveira and authored by Francisco HonórioWith the increased opportunities for digitalization, cities will need to ensure that the conditions of public spaces are adequate for their functions. The use of sensor data (sound and images) to provide information about the quality of public spaces, ensuring safety and accessibility to all users, represents an important tendency for smart cities. Smart cities will use models for spaces, trained using data obtained from sensors and used to provide information about the characteristics of the spaces. The objective of this dissertation is to develop algorithms to collect, identify, and integrate sensor data and to create and train machine learning models that can process audio and image data to provide relevant information about public spaces. Models such as Mask R-CNN, Faster R-CNN, and YOLO will be assessed and trained using existing image databases, to perform real-time object detection. Once trained, data from pilot sites will be used to test the performance of the models. This project will be developed within the scope of project Magellan, developed in cooperation with Schréder and other research institutions. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include two DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers and eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S, among other machines. The work will be developed using the Pytorch or TensorFlow programming platforms for machine learing and the Observable platform for data processing. The selected student will work within the scope of the Magellan project, and have access to the sources of data and financial resources made available by the project.
Using contrastive learning to learn representations from texts and imagesSupervised by Arlindo Manuel Limede de Oliveira and authored by Pedro HenriquesConvolutional neural networks and transformer based architectures have shown the ability to perform complex classification and inference tasks, for images and texts. Still, most of the existing systems rely on the use of massive datasets of annotated data, such as ImageNet. This restricts the applicability of the technology to areas where such massive datasets exist, or imposes large labeling costs. Joint learning from texts and images. Recently, an approach based on contrastive language-image pre-training (CLIP) has demonstrated the ability to learn from unlabeled data, and to generate systems that are competitive with those trained on labeled data. The objective of this dissertation is to apply a CLIP-like approach to data available in Portuguese media, and to assess the quality of the derived system in a set of tasks, such as image classification, image captioning, and multimodal question answering. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include two DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers and eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S, among other machines. The work will be developed using the Pytorch or TensorFlow programming.
Finding interesting regions in whole slide images using deep learningSupervised by: Arlindo Manuel Limede de Oliveira and Jonas Almeida. Developed in cooperation with the Data Science & Engineering Research Group of the Nacional Cancer Institute. Authored by: Martim AfonsoDigital pathology, the analysis of visual information generated from digitized specimen slides, is a rapidly growing are. Whole-Slide Imaging (WSI) enables medical samples to be processed and used in diagnostic medicine, leading to more efficient and scalable processes made possible by deep learning techniques. Whole-slide, very high-resolution, images, need to be handled using special techniques that enable specialists to rapidly focus on the Regions of Interest (RoI) and identify relevant features for the task at hand. The efficient manipulation of WSIs, in a clinical setting, requires efficient system-level protocols and effective feature detection algorithm that, combined, save time and increase the productivity of physicians by automating the triage of WSI for RoIs. The objective of this dissertation is to develop effective deep learning techniques for the identification of the regions of interest in whole-slide images, and to integrate the resulting systems with client-based viewing software developed by NIH researchers. The system integration may or may not be included in the dissertation work, depending on the results obtained during the RoI identification phase. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include two DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers and eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S, among other machines. The work will be developed using the Pytorch or TensorFlow programming platforms for machine learing and the Observable platform for data processing.
Deep learning on chaos game representation of genetic sequencesSupervised by: Arlindo Manuel Limede de Oliveira and Susana Vinga. Developed in cooperation with the Data Science & Engineering Research Group of the Nacional Cancer Institute, headed by Jonas Almeida. Authored by: Vincente SilvestreDeep learning (DL) has been applied with success to areas as diverse as computer vision, natural language processing and protein folding. The ability of deep learning architectures to derive the appropriate features for classification and inference enabled these systems to reach unparalleled performance. However the successful application of deep learning depends on the existence of an appropriate canonical representation with built-in structure, in one, two or more dimensions. The objective of this dissertation is to study the application of deep learning techniques to genomic data, using chaos game representation (CGR), an iterated function that generates bijective maps between symbolic sequences and cartesian spaces.. The dissertation will study the application of standard deep learning architectures, such as ResNet of EfficientNet to the inference of genotype-phenotype correlation from the chaos game representation of genetic sequences and mutation signatures. Genetic sequence data for specific conditions and related information will be selected from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Polygenic Score Catalog (PGS) databases and Genome-Wide Studies at NCI, and used to test the DL+CGR approach. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include two DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers and eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S, among other machines. The work will be developed using the Pytorch or TensorFlow programming platforms.
Using self-supervised contrastive learning to improve medical image analysisSupervised by Arlindo Manuel Limede de Oliveira and authored by Miguel Rasquinho FerreiraDeep learning architectures, which include convolutional neural networks and vision transformers, have made it possible to achieve human-like performance in several medical image analysis tasks. However, some fields, including medical image analysis, are limited by the lack of labeled data. Furthermore, the use of extensive amounts of labeled data to train deep neural network architectures leads to behaviors and peculiar characteristics of the classifiers that do not have parallel in human vision. Self-supervised contrastive learning is a technique that can be effectively used to train systems when labeled data does not exist or is sparse. Furthermore, systems trained using self-supervised contrastive learning have the potential to exhibit behaviors that are more similar to the behavior of the primate’s vision system. The objective of this dissertation is to apply self-supervised contrastive learning techniques to problems in medical image, namely the detection of stroke in computed-tomography images of human brains. The results will be assessed both in term of the performance attained and the similarity of the features derived to features that are present in the visual system of primate brains. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include two DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers and eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S, among other machines. The work will be developed using the Pytorch or TensorFlow programming platforms.
Analysis of visual sensor data for monitoring of open spaces A Modular Architecture for Model-Based Deep Reinforcement LearningSupervised by Arlindo L. Oliveira and authored by João NovoThe objective of this dissertation is to process data received from distributed sensor arrays in order to infer the level and characteristics of space usage in urban environments. The final objective is to derive detailed person and vehicle data from data obtained by light and sound sensors. The student will be integrated in a team developing a large scale project managed by Schréder Hyperion. Project Magellan – Localizable, interoperable, cyber-safe, resilient, distributed autonomous and connected urban infrastructure - has as its objective the development of a new paradigm of urban infrastructure, resilient, robust, interconnected, open and interoperable that will support future smart cities. Knowledge of machine learning, analytics and programming. Interest in data processing and interest in learning data analysis methods. The selected student will have access to the facilities of INESC-ID and the MLKD group (https://mlkd.idss.inesc-id.pt/), including computing facilities that include two DELL PowerEdge C41402 servers and eight NVIDIA 32GB Tesla V100S, among other machines.