Decay Detection in Citrus Fruits Using Hyperspectral Computer Vision

The citrus industry is nowadays an important part of the Spanish agricultural sector. One of the main problems present in the citrus industry is decay caused by Penicillium digitatum and Penicillium italicum fungi. Early detection of decay produced by fungi in citrus is especially important for the citrus industry of distribution. This chapter presents a hyperspectral computer vision system and a set of machine learning techniques in order to detect decay caused by Penicillium digitatum and Penicillium italicum fungi that produce more economic losses to the sector. More specifically, the authors employ a hyperspectral system and artificial neural networks. Nowadays, inspection and removal o…

Analysis of ventricular fibrillation signals using feature selection methods

Feature selection methods in machine learning models are a powerful tool to knowledge extraction. In this work they are used to analyse the intrinsic modifications of cardiac response during ventricular fibrillation due to physical exercise. The data used are two sets of registers from isolated rabbit hearts: control (G1: without physical training), and trained (G2). Four parameters were extracted (dominant frequency, normalized energy, regularity index and number of occurrences). From them, 18 features were extracted. This work analyses the relevance of each feature to classify the records in G1 and G2 using Logistic Regression, Multilayer Perceptron and Extreme Learning Machine. Three fea…

Prediction of the hemoglobin level in hemodialysis patients using machine learning techniques

HighlightsDifferent prediction algorithms were used to predict Hb levels in CRF patients.Prediction errors in the validation cohorts of patients were around 0.6g/dl.Difficulty to obtain lower errors due to the measuring machine precision (0.2g/dl).Relevance analysis of features have been applied for each predictor. Patients who suffer from chronic renal failure (CRF) tend to suffer from an associated anemia as well. Therefore, it is essential to know the hemoglobin (Hb) levels in these patients. The aim of this paper is to predict the hemoglobin (Hb) value using a database of European hemodialysis patients provided by Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) for improving the treatment of this kind of …

Feature Selection Methods to Extract Knowledge and Enhance Analysis of Ventricular Fibrillation Signals

Matlab-based interface for the simultaneous acquisition of force measures and Doppler ultrasound muscular images

This paper tackles the design of a graphical user interface (GUI) based on Matlab (MathWorks Inc., MA), a worldwide standard in the processing of biosignals, which allows the acquisition of muscular force signals and images from a ultrasound scanner simultaneously. Thus, it is possible to unify two key magnitudes for analyzing the evolution of muscular injuries: the force exerted by the muscle and section/length of the muscle when such force is exerted. This paper describes the modules developed to finally show its applicability with a case study to analyze the functioning capacity of the shoulder rotator cuff.

Least-squares temporal difference learning based on an extreme learning machine

Abstract Reinforcement learning (RL) is a general class of algorithms for solving decision-making problems, which are usually modeled using the Markov decision process (MDP) framework. RL can find exact solutions only when the MDP state space is discrete and small enough. Due to the fact that many real-world problems are described by continuous variables, approximation is essential in practical applications of RL. This paper is focused on learning the value function of a fixed policy in continuous MPDs. This is an important subproblem of several RL algorithms. We propose a least-squares temporal difference (LSTD) algorithm based on the extreme learning machine. LSTD is typically combined wi…

Visual data mining with self-organising maps for ventricular fibrillation analysis

Detection of ventricular fibrillation (VF) at an early stage is being deeply studied in order to lower the risk of sudden death and allows the specialist to have greater reaction time to give the patient a good recovering therapy. Some works are focusing on detecting VF based on numerical analysis of time-frequency distributions, but in general the methods used do not provide insight into the problem. However, this study proposes a new methodology in order to obtain information about this problem. This work uses a supervised self-organising map (SOM) to obtain visually information among four important groups of patients: VF (ventricular fibrillation), VT (ventricular tachycardia), HP (healt…

Educational Software Based on Matlab GUIs for Neural Networks Courses

Neural Networks (NN) are one of the most used machine learning techniques in different areas of knowledge. This has led to the emergence of a large number of courses of Neural Networks around the world and in areas where the users of this technique do not have a lot of programming skills. Current software that implements these elements, such as Matlab®, has a number of important limitations in teaching field. In some cases, the implementation of a MLP requires a thorough knowledge of the software and of the instructions that train and validate these systems. In other cases, the architecture of the model is fixed and they do not allow an automatic sweep of the parameters that determine the a…

Analysis of computer user behavior, security incidents and fraud using Self-Organizing Maps

Abstract This paper addresses several topics of great interest in computer security in recent years: computer users’ behavior, security incidents and fraud exposure on the Internet, due to their high economic and social cost. Traditional research has been based mainly on gathering information about security incidents and fraud through surveys. The novelty of the present study is given by the use of Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), a visual data mining technique. SOMs are applied to two data sets acquired using two different methodologies for collecting data about computer security. First, a traditional online survey about fraud exposure, security and user behavior was used. Second, in addition …

Hyperspectral LCTF-based system for classification of decay in mandarins caused by Penicillium digitatum and Penicillium italicum using the most relevant bands and non-linear classifiers

[EN] Green mold (Penicillium digitatum) and blue mold (Penicillium italicum) are important sources of postharvest decay affecting the commercialization of mandarins. These fungi infections produce enormous economic losses in mandarin production if early detection is not carried out. Nowadays, this detection is performed manually in dark chambers, where the fruit is illuminated by ultraviolet light to produce fluorescence, which is potentially dangerous for humans. This paper documents a new methodology based on hyperspectral imaging and advanced machine-learning techniques (artificial neural networks and classification and regression trees) for the segmentation and classification of images …

ELM Regularized Method for Classification Problems

Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is a recently proposed algorithm, efficient and fast for learning the parameters of single layer neural structures. One of the main problems of this algorithm is to choose the optimal architecture for a given problem solution. To solve this limitation several solutions have been proposed in the literature, including the regularization of the structure. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no works where such adjustment is applied to classification problems in the presence of a non-linearity in the output; all published works tackle modelling or regression problems. Our proposal has been applied to a series of standard databases for the evaluation o…

Adaptive treatment of anemia on hemodialysis patients: A reinforcement learning approach

The aim of this work is to study the applicability of reinforcement learning methods to design adaptive treatment strategies that optimize, in the long-term, the dosage of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) in the management of anemia in patients undergoing hemodialysis. Adaptive treatment strategies are recently emerging as a new paradigm for the treatment and long-term management of the chronic disease. Reinforcement Learning (RL) can be useful to extract such strategies from clinical data, taking into account delayed effects and without requiring any mathematical model. In this work, we focus on the so-called Fitted Q Iteration algorithm, a RL approach that deals with the data very…

Visual Data Mining in Physiotherapy Using Self-Organizing Maps

The basis of all clinical science developments is the analysis of the data obtained from a particular problem. In recent decades, however, the capacity of computers to process data has been increasing exponentially, which has created the possibility of applying more powerful methods of data analysis. Among these methods, the multidimensional visual data mining methods are outstanding. These methods show all the variables of one particular problem on the whole allowing to the clinical specialist to extract his own conclusions. In this chapter, a neural approximation to this kind of data mining is shown by means of the valuation analysis of the knee in athletes in the pre- and post-surgery of…

Self-Organising Maps: A new way to screen the level of satisfaction of dialysis patients

Highlights? FME as dialysis services global provider monitors patient satisfaction in its network. ? A specific questionnaire was developed and administered to the hemodialysis patients. ? To detect residual area of low satisfaction the Self-Organising Map was implemented. ? This method allows identifying niches of dissatisfaction for specific patient groups. Evaluation of patient satisfaction has become an important indicator for assessing health care quality. Fresenius Medical Care (FME) as a global provider of dialysis services through its NephroCare network has a strong interest in monitoring patient satisfaction.The aim of the paper is to test and validate a methodology for detecting a…

Sectors on sectors (SonS): A new hierarchical clustering visualization tool

Clustering techniques have been widely applied to extract information from high-dimensional data structures in the last few years. Graphs are especially relevant for clustering, but many graphs associated with hierarchical clustering do not give any information about the values of the centroids' attributes and the relationships among them. In this paper, we propose a new visualization approach for hierarchical cluster analysis in which the above-mentioned information is available. The method is based on pie charts. The pie charts are divided into several pie segments or sectors corresponding to each cluster. The radius of each pie segment is proportional to the number of patterns included i…

A framework for modelling the biomechanical behaviour of the human liver during breathing in real time using machine learning

Progress in biomechanical modelling of human soft tissue is the basis for the development of new clinical applications capable of improving the diagnosis and treatment of some diseases (e.g. cancer), as well as the surgical planning and guidance of some interventions. The finite element method (FEM) is one of the most popular techniques used to predict the deformation of the human soft tissue due to its high accuracy. However, FEM has an associated high computational cost, which makes it difficult its integration in real-time computer-aided surgery systems. An alternative for simulating the mechanical behaviour of human organs in real time comes from the use of machine learning (ML) techniq…

Regularized extreme learning machine for regression problems

Extreme learning machine (ELM) is a new learning algorithm for single-hidden layer feedforward networks (SLFNs) proposed by Huang et al. [1]. Its main advantage is the lower computational cost, which is especially relevant when dealing with many patterns defined in a high-dimensional space. This paper proposes an algorithm for pruning ELM networks by using regularized regression methods, thus obtaining a suitable number of the hidden nodes in the network architecture. Beginning from an initial large number of hidden nodes, irrelevant nodes are then pruned using ridge regression, elastic net and lasso methods; hence, the architectural design of ELM network can be automated. Empirical studies…

Optimization of anemia treatment in hemodialysis patients via reinforcement learning

Objective: Anemia is a frequent comorbidity in hemodialysis patients that can be successfully treated by administering erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs). ESAs dosing is currently based on clinical protocols that often do not account for the high inter- and intra-individual variability in the patient's response. As a result, the hemoglobin level of some patients oscillates around the target range, which is associated with multiple risks and side-effects. This work proposes a methodology based on reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize ESA therapy. Methods: RL is a data-driven approach for solving sequential decision-making problems that are formulated as Markov decision processes (MDP…

Online fitted policy iteration based on extreme learning machines

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a learning paradigm that can be useful in a wide variety of real-world applications. However, its applicability to complex problems remains problematic due to different causes. Particularly important among these are the high quantity of data required by the agent to learn useful policies and the poor scalability to high-dimensional problems due to the use of local approximators. This paper presents a novel RL algorithm, called online fitted policy iteration (OFPI), that steps forward in both directions. OFPI is based on a semi-batch scheme that increases the convergence speed by reusing data and enables the use of global approximators by reformulating the valu…

Artificial Neural Networks in Physical Therapy

A new machine learning approach for predicting the response to anemia treatment in a large cohort of End Stage Renal Disease patients undergoing dialysis

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) anemia is one of the main common comorbidities in patients undergoing End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). Iron supplement and especially Erythropoiesis Stimulating Agents (ESA) have become the treatment of choice for that anemia. However, it is very complicated to find an adequate treatment for every patient in each particular situation since dosage guidelines are based on average behaviors, and thus, they do not take into account the particular response to those drugs by different patients, although that response may vary enormously from one patient to another and even for the same patient in different stages of the anemia. This work proposes an advance with respec…

Prediction of Temperature in Buildings Using Machine Learning Techniques

Energy efficiency is a trend due to ecological and economic benefits. Within this field, energy efficiency in buildings sector constitutes one of the main concerns due to the fact that approximately 40% of total world energy consumption corresponds to this sector. Climate control in buildings has the potential to increase its energy efficiency planning strategies for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) machines. These planning strategies may include a stage for long term indoor temperature forecasting. This chapter entails the use of four prediction models (NAÏVE, MLR, MLP, FIS and ANFIS) to forecast temperature in an office building using a temporal horizon of several hour…