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We consider the problem of estimating the direction-of-arrival (DoA) of a desired source located in a known region of interest in the presence of interfering sources and multipath. We propose an approach that precedes the DoA estimation and relies on generating a set of reference steering vectors. The steering vectors' generative model is a free space model, which is beneficial for many DoA estimation algorithms. The set of reference steering vectors is then used to compute a function that maps the received signals from the adverse environment to a reference domain free from interfering sources and multipath. We show theoretically and empirically that the proposed map, which is analogous to domain adaption, improves DoA estimation by mitigating interference and multipath effects. Specifically, we demonstrate a substantial improvement in accuracy when the proposed approach is applied before three commonly used beamformers: the delay-and-sum (DS), the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR), and the Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC).

Before we attempt to learn a function between two (sets of) observables of a physical process, we must first decide what the inputs and what the outputs of the desired function are going to be. Here we demonstrate two distinct, data-driven ways of initially deciding ``the right quantities'' to relate through such a function, and then proceed to learn it. This is accomplished by processing multiple simultaneous heterogeneous data streams (ensembles of time series) from observations of a physical system: multiple observation processes of the system. We thus determine (a) what subsets of observables are common between the observation processes (and therefore observable from each other, relatable through a function); and (b) what information is unrelated to these common observables, and therefore particular to each observation process, and not contributing to the desired function. Any data-driven function approximation technique can subsequently be used to learn the input-output relation, from k-nearest neighbors and Geometric Harmonics to Gaussian Processes and Neural Networks. Two particular ``twists'' of the approach are discussed. The first has to do with the identifiability of particular quantities of interest from the measurements. We now construct mappings from a single set of observations of one process to entire level sets of measurements of the process, consistent with this single set. The second attempts to relate our framework to a form of causality: if one of the observation processes measures ``now'', while the second observation process measures ``in the future'', the function to be learned among what is common across observation processes constitutes a dynamical model for the system evolution.

Equivariant machine learning is an approach for designing deep learning models that respect the symmetries of the problem, with the aim of reducing model complexity and improving generalization. In this paper, we focus on an extension of shift equivariance, which is the basis of convolution networks on images, to general graphs. Unlike images, graphs do not have a natural notion of domain translation. Therefore, we consider the graph functional shifts as the symmetry group: the unitary operators that commute with the graph shift operator. Notably, such symmetries operate in the signal space rather than directly in the spatial space. We remark that each linear filter layer of a standard spectral graph neural network (GNN) commutes with graph functional shifts, but the activation function breaks this symmetry. Instead, we propose nonlinear spectral filters (NLSFs) that are fully equivariant to graph functional shifts and show that they have universal approximation properties. The proposed NLSFs are based on a new form of spectral domain that is transferable between graphs. We demonstrate the superior performance of NLSFs over existing spectral GNNs in node and graph classification benchmarks.

Alternating Diffusion (AD) is a commonly applied diffusion-based sensor fusion algorithm. While it has been successfully applied to various problems, its computational burden remains a limitation. Inspired by the landmark diffusion idea considered in the Robust and Scalable Embedding via Landmark Diffusion (ROSELAND), we propose a variation of AD, called Landmark AD (LAD), which captures the essence of AD while offering superior computational efficiency. We provide a series of theoretical analyses of LAD under the manifold setup and apply it to the automatic sleep stage annotation problem with two electroencephalogram channels to demonstrate its application.

Covariance fitting (CF) is a comprehensive approach for direction of arrival (DoA) estimation, consolidating many common solutions. Standard practice is to use Euclidean criteria for CF, disregarding the intrinsic Hermitian positive-definite (HPD) geometry of the spatial covariance matrices. We assert that this oversight leads to inherent limitations. In this paper, as a remedy, we present a comprehensive study of the use of various Riemannian metrics of HPD matrices in CF. We focus on the advantages of the Affine-Invariant (AI) and the Log-Euclidean (LE) Riemannian metrics. Consequently, we propose a new practical beamformer based on the LE metric and derive analytically its spatial characteristics, such as the beamwidth and sidelobe attenuation, under noisy conditions. Comparing these features to classical beamformers shows significant advantage. In addition, we demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, the LE beamformer's robustness in scenarios with small sample sizes and in the presence of noise, interference, and multipath channels.

Langevin dynamics (LD) is widely used for sampling from distributions and for optimization. In this work, we derive a closed-form expression for the expected loss of preconditioned LD near stationary points of the objective function. We use the fact that at the vicinity of such points, LD reduces to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, which is amenable to convenient mathematical treatment. Our analysis reveals that when the preconditioning matrix satisfies a particular relation with respect to the noise covariance, LD's expected loss becomes proportional to the rank of the objective's Hessian. We illustrate the applicability of this result in the context of neural networks, where the Hessian rank has been shown to capture the complexity of the predictor function but is usually computationally hard to probe. Finally, we use our analysis to compare SGD-like and Adam-like preconditioners and identify the regimes under which each of them leads to a lower expected loss., Comment: Accepted to AAAI-24 main track

Finding meaningful representations and distances of hierarchical data is important in many fields. This paper presents a new method for hierarchical data embedding and distance. Our method relies on combining diffusion geometry, a central approach to manifold learning, and hyperbolic geometry. Specifically, using diffusion geometry, we build multi-scale densities on the data, aimed to reveal their hierarchical structure, and then embed them into a product of hyperbolic spaces. We show theoretically that our embedding and distance recover the underlying hierarchical structure. In addition, we demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method and its advantages compared to existing methods on graph embedding benchmarks and hierarchical datasets.

We consider the problem of estimating the direction of arrival of desired acoustic sources in the presence of multiple acoustic interference sources. All the sources are located in noisy and reverberant environments and are received by a microphone array. We propose a new approach for designing beamformers and DoA estimation methods based on the Riemannian geometry of the manifold of Hermitian positive definite matrices. Specifically, we show theoretically that incorporating the Riemannian mean of the spatial correlation matrices into frequently-used beamformers gives rise to spatial spectra that reject the directions of interference sources and result in a higher signal-to-interference ratio. We experimentally demonstrate the advantages of our approach in designing several beamformers and a recent DoA estimation method in the presence of simultaneously active multiple interference sources.

Dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) is a leading tool for equation-free analysis of high-dimensional dynamical systems from observations. In this work, we focus on a combination of delay-coordinates embedding and DMD, i.e., delay-coordinates DMD, which accommodates the analysis of a broad family of observations. An important utility of DMD is the compact and reduced-order spectral representation of observations in terms of the DMD eigenvalues and modes, where the temporal information is separated from the spatial information. From a spatiotemporal viewpoint, we show that when DMD is applied to delay-coordinates embedding, temporal information is intertwined with spatial information, inducing a particular spectral structure on the DMD components. We formulate and analyze this structure, which we term the spatiotemporal coupling in delay-coordinates DMD. Based on this spatiotemporal coupling, we propose a new method for DMD components selection. When using delay-coordinates DMD that comprises redundant modes, this selection is an essential step for obtaining a compact and reduced-order representation of the observations. We demonstrate our method on noisy simulated signals and various dynamical systems and show superior component selection compared to a commonly-used method that relies on the amplitudes of the modes., Comment: 20 pages, 17 figures

During Deep Brain Stimulation(DBS) surgery for treating Parkinson's disease, one vital task is to detect a specific brain area called the Subthalamic Nucleus(STN) and a sub-territory within the STN called the Dorsolateral Oscillatory Region(DLOR). Accurate detection of the STN borders is crucial for adequate clinical outcomes. Currently, the detection is based on human experts, guided by supervised machine learning detection algorithms. Consequently, this procedure depends on the knowledge and experience of particular experts and on the amount and quality of the labeled data used for training the machine learning algorithms. In this paper, to circumvent the dependence and bias caused by the training data, we present a data-driven unsupervised method for detecting the STN and the DLOR during DBS surgery. Our method is based on an agnostic modeling approach for general target detection tasks. Given a set of measurements, we extract features and propose a variant of the Mahalanobis distance between these features. We show theoretically that this distance enhances the differences between measurements with different intrinsic characteristics. Then, we incorporate the new features and distances into a manifold learning method, called Diffusion Maps. We show that this method gives rise to a representation that is consistent with the underlying factors that govern the measurements. Since the construction of this representation is carried out without rigid modeling assumptions, it can facilitate a wide range of detection tasks; here, we propose a specification for the STN and DLOR detection tasks. We present detection results on 25 sets of measurements recorded from 16 patients during surgery. Compared to a competing supervised algorithm based on a Hidden Markov Model, our unsupervised method demonstrates similar results in the STN detection task and superior results in the DLOR detection task.

In this paper, we present a new method for few-sample supervised feature selection (FS). Our method first learns the manifold of the feature space of each class using kernels capturing multi-feature associations. Then, based on Riemannian geometry, a composite kernel is computed, extracting the differences between the learned feature associations. Finally, a FS score based on spectral analysis is proposed. Considering multi-feature associations makes our method multivariate by design. This in turn allows for the extraction of the hidden manifold underlying the features and avoids overfitting, facilitating few-sample FS. We showcase the efficacy of our method on illustrative examples and several benchmarks, where our method demonstrates higher accuracy in selecting the informative features compared to competing methods. In addition, we show that our FS leads to improved classification and better generalization when applied to test data., Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures

Multivariate time-series have become abundant in recent years, as many data-acquisition systems record information through multiple sensors simultaneously. In this paper, we assume the variables pertain to some geometry and present an operator-based approach for spatiotemporal analysis. Our approach combines three components that are often considered separately: (i) manifold learning for building operators representing the geometry of the variables, (ii) Riemannian geometry of symmetric positive-definite matrices for multiscale composition of operators corresponding to different time samples, and (iii) spectral analysis of the composite operators for extracting different dynamic modes. We propose a method that is analogous to the classical wavelet analysis, which we term Riemannian multi-resolution analysis (RMRA). We provide some theoretical results on the spectral analysis of the composite operators, and we demonstrate the proposed method on simulations and on real data., Comment: 48 pages, 13 figures

Latent variable discovery is a central problem in data analysis with a broad range of applications in applied science. In this work, we consider data given as an invertible mixture of two statistically independent components and assume that one of the components is observed while the other is hidden. Our goal is to recover the hidden component. For this purpose, we propose an autoencoder equipped with a discriminator. Unlike the standard nonlinear ICA problem, which was shown to be non-identifiable, in the special case of ICA we consider here, we show that our approach can recover the component of interest up to entropy-preserving transformation. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach in several tasks, including image synthesis, voice cloning, and fetal ECG extraction., Comment: Published as a conference paper at Neurips 2022. In the current version the proof of the lemma is modified

We address a three-tier numerical framework based on manifold learning for the forecasting of high-dimensional time series. At the first step, we embed the time series into a reduced low-dimensional space using a nonlinear manifold learning algorithm such as Locally Linear Embedding and Diffusion Maps. At the second step, we construct reduced-order regression models on the manifold, in particular Multivariate Autoregressive (MVAR) and Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) models, to forecast the embedded dynamics. At the final step, we lift the embedded time series back to the original high-dimensional space using Radial Basis Functions interpolation and Geometric Harmonics. For our illustrations, we test the forecasting performance of the proposed numerical scheme with four sets of time series: three synthetic stochastic ones resembling EEG signals produced from linear and nonlinear stochastic models with different model orders, and one real-world data set containing daily time series of 10 key foreign exchange rates (FOREX) spanning the time period 03/09/2001-29/10/2020. The forecasting performance of the proposed numerical scheme is assessed using the combinations of manifold learning, modelling and lifting approaches. We also provide a comparison with the Principal Component Analysis algorithm as well as with the naive random walk model and the MVAR and GPR models trained and implemented directly in the high-dimensional space.

We demonstrate the identification and classification of topological phase transitions from experimental data using Diffusion Maps: a nonlocal unsupervised machine learning method. We analyze experimental data from an optical system undergoing a topological phase transition and demonstrate the ability of this approach to identify topological phase transitions even when the data originates from a small part of the system, and does not even include edge states., Comment: 17 p

In a world abundant with diverse data arising from complex acquisition techniques, there is a growing need for new data analysis methods. In this paper we focus on high-dimensional data that are organized into several hierarchical datasets. We assume that each dataset consists of complex samples, and every sample has a distinct irregular structure modeled by a graph. The main novelty in this work lies in the combination of two complementing powerful data-analytic approaches: topological data analysis (TDA) and geometric manifold learning. Geometry primarily contains local information, while topology inherently provides global descriptors. Based on this combination, we present a method for building an informative representation of hierarchical datasets. At the finer (sample) level, we devise a new metric between samples based on manifold learning that facilitates quantitative structural analysis. At the coarser (dataset) level, we employ TDA to extract qualitative structural information from the datasets. We showcase the applicability and advantages of our method on simulated data and on a corpus of hyper-spectral images. We show that an ensemble of hyper-spectral images exhibits a hierarchical structure that fits well the considered setting. In addition, we show that our new method gives rise to superior classification results compared to state-of-the-art methods.

In this paper, we consider data acquired by multimodal sensors capturing complementary aspects and features of a measured phenomenon. We focus on a scenario in which the measurements share mutual sources of variability but might also be contaminated by other measurement-specific sources such as interferences or noise. Our approach combines manifold learning, which is a class of nonlinear data-driven dimension reduction methods, with the well-known Riemannian geometry of symmetric and positive-definite (SPD) matrices. Manifold learning typically includes the spectral analysis of a kernel built from the measurements. Here, we take a different approach, utilizing the Riemannian geometry of the kernels. In particular, we study the way the spectrum of the kernels changes along geodesic paths on the manifold of SPD matrices. We show that this change enables us, in a purely unsupervised manner, to derive a compact, yet informative, description of the relations between the measurements, in terms of their underlying components. Based on this result, we present new algorithms for extracting the common latent components and for identifying common and measurement-specific components.

A low-dimensional dynamical system is observed in an experiment as a high-dimensional signal; for example, a video of a chaotic pendulums system. Assuming that we know the dynamical model up to some unknown parameters, can we estimate the underlying system's parameters by measuring its time-evolution only once? The key information for performing this estimation lies in the temporal inter-dependencies between the signal and the model. We propose a kernel-based score to compare these dependencies. Our score generalizes a maximum likelihood estimator for a linear model to a general nonlinear setting in an unknown feature space. We estimate the system's underlying parameters by maximizing the proposed score. We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the method using two chaotic dynamical systems - the double pendulum and the Lorenz '63 model.

In this paper, we present new results on the Riemannian geometry of symmetric positive semi-definite (SPSD) matrices. First, based on an existing approximation of the geodesic path, we introduce approximations of the logarithmic and exponential maps. Second, we present a closed-form expression for Parallel Transport (PT). Third, we derive a canonical representation for a set of SPSD matrices. Based on these results, we propose an algorithm for Domain Adaptation (DA) and demonstrate its performance in two applications: fusion of hyper-spectral images and motion identification.

Objective: We aimed to fuse the outputs of different electrocardiogram-derived respiration (EDR) algorithms to create one EDR signal that is of higher quality. Methods: We viewed each EDR algorithm as a software sensor that recorded breathing activity from a different vantage point, identified high-quality software sensors based on the respiratory signal quality index, aligned the highest-quality EDRs with a phase synchronization technique based on the graph connection Laplacian, and finally fused those aligned, high-quality EDRs. We refer to the output as the sync-ensembled EDR signal. The proposed algorithm was evaluated on two large-scale databases of whole-night polysomnograms. We evaluated the performance of the proposed algorithm using three respiratory signals recorded from different hardware sensors, and compared it with other existing EDR algorithms. A sensitivity analysis was carried out for a total of five cases: fusion by taking the mean of EDR signals, and the four cases of EDR signal alignment without and with synchronization and without and with signal quality selection. Results: The sync-ensembled EDR algorithm outperforms existing EDR algorithms when evaluated by the synchronized correlation ({\gamma}-score), optimal transport (OT) distance, and estimated average respiratory rate (EARR) score, all with statistical significance. The sensitivity analysis shows that the signal quality selection and EDR signal alignment are both critical for the performance, both with statistical significance. Conclusion: The sync-ensembled EDR provides robust respiratory information from electrocardiogram. Significance: Phase synchronization is not only theoretically rigorous but also practical to design a robust EDR.

In this paper, we propose a spectral method for deriving functions that are jointly smooth on multiple observed manifolds. This allows us to register measurements of the same phenomenon by heterogeneous sensors, and to reject sensor-specific noise. Our method is unsupervised and primarily consists of two steps. First, using kernels, we obtain a subspace spanning smooth functions on each separate manifold. Then, we apply a spectral method to the obtained subspaces and discover functions that are jointly smooth on all manifolds. We show analytically that our method is guaranteed to provide a set of orthogonal functions that are as jointly smooth as possible, ordered by increasing Dirichlet energy from the smoothest to the least smooth. In addition, we show that the extracted functions can be efficiently extended to unseen data using the Nystr\"{o}m method. We demonstrate the proposed method on both simulated and real measured data and compare the results to nonlinear variants of the seminal Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA). Particularly, we show superior results for sleep stage identification. In addition, we show how the proposed method can be leveraged for finding minimal realizations of parameter spaces of nonlinear dynamical systems.

Options have been shown to be an effective tool in reinforcement learning, facilitating improved exploration and learning. In this paper, we present an approach based on spectral graph theory and derive an algorithm that systematically discovers options without access to a specific reward or task assignment. As opposed to the common practice used in previous methods, our algorithm makes full use of the spectrum of the graph Laplacian. Incorporating modes associated with higher graph frequencies unravels domain subtleties, which are shown to be useful for option discovery. Using geometric and manifold-based analysis, we present a theoretical justification for the algorithm. In addition, we showcase its performance in several domains, demonstrating clear improvements compared to competing methods.

In this paper, we address the problem of Domain Adaptation (DA) using Optimal Transport (OT) on Riemannian manifolds. We model the difference between two domains by a diffeomorphism and use the polar factorization theorem to claim that OT is indeed optimal for DA in a well-defined sense, up to a volume preserving map. We then focus on the manifold of Symmetric and Positive-Definite (SPD) matrices, whose structure provided a useful context in recent applications. We demonstrate the polar factorization theorem on this manifold. Due to the uniqueness of the weighted Riemannian mean, and by exploiting existing regularized OT algorithms, we formulate a simple algorithm that maps the source domain to the target domain. We test our algorithm on two Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) data sets and observe state of the art performance.

Motivated by establishing theoretical foundations for various manifold learning algorithms, we study the problem of Mahalanobis distance (MD), and the associated precision matrix, estimation from high-dimensional noisy data. By relying on recent transformative results in covariance matrix estimation, we demonstrate the sensitivity of \MD~and the associated precision matrix to measurement noise, determining the exact asymptotic signal-to-noise ratio at which MD fails, and quantifying its performance otherwise. In addition, for an appropriate loss function, we propose an asymptotically optimal shrinker, which is shown to be beneficial over the classical implementation of the MD, both analytically and in simulations. The result is extended to the manifold setup, where the nonlinear interaction between curvature and high-dimensional noise is taken care of. The developed solution is applied to study a multiscale reduction problem in the dynamical system analysis.

Finding appropriate low dimensional representations of high-dimensional multi-modal data can be challenging, since each modality embodies unique deformations and interferences. In this paper, we address the problem using manifold learning, where the data from each modality is assumed to lie on some manifold. In this context, the goal is to characterize the relations between the different modalities by studying their underlying manifolds. We propose two new diffusion operators that allow to isolate, enhance and attenuate the hidden components of multi-modal data in a data-driven manner. Based on these new operators, efficient low-dimensional representations can be constructed for such data, which characterize the common structures and the differences between the manifolds underlying the different modalities. The capabilities of the proposed operators are demonstrated on 3D shapes and on a fetal heart rate monitoring application.

In this paper, we consider the problem of domain adaptation. We propose to view the data through the lens of covariance matrices and present a method for domain adaptation using parallel transport on the cone manifold of symmetric positive-definite matrices. We provide rigorous analysis using Riemanninan geometry, illuminating the theoretical guarantees and benefits of the presented method. In addition, we demonstrate these benefits using experimental results on simulations and real-measured data.

Data living on manifolds commonly appear in many applications. Often this results from an inherently latent low-dimensional system being observed through higher dimensional measurements. We show that under certain conditions, it is possible to construct an intrinsic and isometric data representation, which respects an underlying latent intrinsic geometry. Namely, we view the observed data only as a proxy and learn the structure of a latent unobserved intrinsic manifold, whereas common practice is to learn the manifold of the observed data. For this purpose, we build a new metric and propose a method for its robust estimation by assuming mild statistical priors and by using artificial neural networks as a mechanism for metric regularization and parametrization. We show successful application to unsupervised indoor localization in ad-hoc sensor networks. Specifically, we show that our proposed method facilitates accurate localization of a moving agent from imaging data it collects. Importantly, our method is applied in the same way to two different imaging modalities, thereby demonstrating its intrinsic and modality-invariant capabilities.

Blind source separation (BSS) is addressed, using a novel data-driven approach, based on a well-established probabilistic model. The proposed method is specifically designed for separation of multichannel audio mixtures. The algorithm relies on spectral decomposition of the correlation matrix between different time frames. The probabilistic model implies that the column space of the correlation matrix is spanned by the probabilities of the various speakers across time. The number of speakers is recovered by the eigenvalue decay, and the eigenvectors form a simplex of the speakers' probabilities. Time frames dominated by each of the speakers are identified exploiting convex geometry tools on the recovered simplex. The mixing acoustic channels are estimated utilizing the identified sets of frames, and a linear umixing is performed to extract the individual speakers. The derived simplexes are visually demonstrated for mixtures of 2, 3 and 4 speakers. We also conduct a comprehensive experimental study, showing high separation capabilities in various reverberation conditions., Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing

In this paper, we propose a non-parametric method for state estimation of high-dimensional nonlinear stochastic dynamical systems, which evolve according to gradient flows with isotropic diffusion. We combine diffusion maps, a manifold learning technique, with a linear Kalman filter and with concepts from Koopman operator theory. More concretely, using diffusion maps, we construct data-driven virtual state coordinates, which linearize the system model. Based on these coordinates, we devise a data-driven framework for state estimation using the Kalman filter. We demonstrate the strengths of our method with respect to both parametric and non-parametric algorithms in three tracking problems. In particular, applying the approach to actual recordings of hippocampal neural activity in rodents directly yields a representation of the position of the animals. We show that the proposed method outperforms competing non-parametric algorithms in the examined stochastic problem formulations. Additionally, we obtain results comparable to classical parametric algorithms, which, in contrast to our method, are equipped with model knowledge., Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, submitted to IEEE TSP

This paper explores a fully unsupervised deep learning approach for computing distance-preserving maps that generate low-dimensional embeddings for a certain class of manifolds. We use the Siamese configuration to train a neural network to solve the problem of least squares multidimensional scaling for generating maps that approximately preserve geodesic distances. By training with only a few landmarks, we show a significantly improved local and nonlocal generalization of the isometric mapping as compared to analogous non-parametric counterparts. Importantly, the combination of a deep-learning framework with a multidimensional scaling objective enables a numerical analysis of network architectures to aid in understanding their representation power. This provides a geometric perspective to the generalizability of deep learning., Comment: 10 pages, 11 Figures

We consider the analysis of high dimensional data given in the form of a matrix with columns consisting of observations and rows consisting of features. Often the data is such that the observations do not reside on a regular grid, and the given order of the features is arbitrary and does not convey a notion of locality. Therefore, traditional transforms and metrics cannot be used for data organization and analysis. In this paper, our goal is to organize the data by defining an appropriate representation and metric such that they respect the smoothness and structure underlying the data. We also aim to generalize the joint clustering of observations and features in the case the data does not fall into clear disjoint groups. For this purpose, we propose multiscale data-driven transforms and metrics based on trees. Their construction is implemented in an iterative refinement procedure that exploits the co-dependencies between features and observations. Beyond the organization of a single dataset, our approach enables us to transfer the organization learned from one dataset to another and to integrate several datasets together. We present an application to breast cancer gene expression analysis: learning metrics on the genes to cluster the tumor samples into cancer sub-types and validating the joint organization of both the genes and the samples. We demonstrate that using our approach to combine information from multiple gene expression cohorts, acquired by different profiling technologies, improves the clustering of tumor samples., Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Accepted to IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks

Manifold-learning techniques are routinely used in mining complex spatiotemporal data to extract useful, parsimonious data representations/parametrizations; these are, in turn, useful in nonlinear model identification tasks. We focus here on the case of time series data that can ultimately be modelled as a spatially distributed system (e.g. a partial differential equation, PDE), but where we do not know the space in which this PDE should be formulated. Hence, even the spatial coordinates for the distributed system themselves need to be identified - to emerge from - the data mining process. We will first validate this emergent space reconstruction for time series sampled without space labels in known PDEs; this brings up the issue of observability of physical space from temporal observation data, and the transition from spatially resolved to lumped (order-parameter-based) representations by tuning the scale of the data mining kernels. We will then present actual emergent space discovery illustrations. Our illustrative examples include chimera states (states of coexisting coherent and incoherent dynamics), and chaotic as well as quasiperiodic spatiotemporal dynamics, arising in partial differential equations and/or in heterogeneous networks. We also discuss how data-driven spatial coordinates can be extracted in ways invariant to the nature of the measuring instrument. Such gauge-invariant data mining can go beyond the fusion of heterogeneous observations of the same system, to the possible matching of apparently different systems.

A fundamental question in data analysis, machine learning and signal processing is how to compare between data points. The choice of the distance metric is specifically challenging for high-dimensional data sets, where the problem of meaningfulness is more prominent (e.g. the Euclidean distance between images). In this paper, we propose to exploit a property of high-dimensional data that is usually ignored - which is the structure stemming from the relationships between the coordinates. Specifically we show that organizing similar coordinates in clusters can be exploited for the construction of the Mahalanobis distance between samples. When the observable samples are generated by a nonlinear transformation of hidden variables, the Mahalanobis distance allows the recovery of the Euclidean distances in the hidden space.We illustrate the advantage of our approach on a synthetic example where the discovery of clusters of correlated coordinates improves the estimation of the principal directions of the samples. Our method was applied to real data of gene expression for lung adenocarcinomas (lung cancer). By using the proposed metric we found a partition of subjects to risk groups with a good separation between their Kaplan-Meier survival plot.

The problem of information fusion from multiple data-sets acquired by multimodal sensors has drawn significant research attention over the years. In this paper, we focus on a particular problem setting consisting of a physical phenomenon or a system of interest observed by multiple sensors. We assume that all sensors measure some aspects of the system of interest with additional sensor-specific and irrelevant components. Our goal is to recover the variables relevant to the observed system and to filter out the nuisance effects of the sensor-specific variables. We propose an approach based on manifold learning, which is particularly suitable for problems with multiple modalities, since it aims to capture the intrinsic structure of the data and relies on minimal prior model knowledge. Specifically, we propose a nonlinear filtering scheme, which extracts the hidden sources of variability captured by two or more sensors, that are independent of the sensor-specific components. In addition to presenting a theoretical analysis, we demonstrate our technique on real measured data for the purpose of sleep stage assessment based on multiple, multimodal sensor measurements. We show that without prior knowledge on the different modalities and on the measured system, our method gives rise to a data-driven representation that is well correlated with the underlying sleep process and is robust to noise and sensor-specific effects.

The discovery of physical laws consistent with empirical observations lies at the heart of (applied) science and engineering. These laws typically take the form of nonlinear differential equations depending on parameters, dynamical systems theory provides, through the appropriate normal forms, an "intrinsic", prototypical characterization of the types of dynamical regimes accessible to a given model. Using an implementation of data-informed geometry learning we directly reconstruct the relevant "normal forms": a quantitative mapping from empirical observations to prototypical realizations of the underlying dynamics. Interestingly, the state variables and the parameters of these realizations are inferred from the empirical observations, without prior knowledge or understanding, they parametrize the dynamics {\em intrinsically}, without explicit reference to fundamental physical quantities.

Consider a set of multiple, multimodal sensors capturing a complex system or a physical phenomenon of interest. Our primary goal is to distinguish the underlying sources of variability manifested in the measured data. The first step in our analysis is to find the common source of variability present in all sensor measurements. We base our work on a recent paper, which tackles this problem with alternating diffusion (AD). In this work, we suggest to further the analysis by extracting the sensor-specific variables in addition to the common source. We propose an algorithm, which we analyze theoretically, and then demonstrate on three different applications: a synthetic example, a toy problem, and the task of fetal ECG extraction.

The problem of source localization with ad hoc microphone networks in noisy and reverberant enclosures, given a training set of prerecorded measurements, is addressed in this paper. The training set is assumed to consist of a limited number of labelled measurements, attached with corresponding positions, and a larger amount of unlabelled measurements from unknown locations. However, microphone calibration is not required. We use a Bayesian inference approach for estimating a function that maps measurement-based feature vectors to the corresponding positions. The central issue is how to combine the information provided by the different microphones in a unified statistical framework. To address this challenge, we model this function using a Gaussian process with a covariance function that encapsulates both the connections between pairs of microphones and the relations among the samples in the training set. The parameters of the process are estimated by optimizing a maximum likelihood (ML) criterion. In addition, a recursive adaptation mechanism is derived where the new streaming measurements are used to update the model. Performance is demonstrated for 2-D localization of both simulated data and real-life recordings in a variety of reverberation and noise levels.

In this paper, we address the problem of hidden common variables discovery from multimodal data sets of nonlinear high-dimensional observations. We present a metric based on local applications of canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and incorporate it in a kernel-based manifold learning technique.We show that this metric discovers the hidden common variables underlying the multimodal observations by estimating the Euclidean distance between them. Our approach can be viewed both as an extension of CCA to a nonlinear setting as well as an extension of manifold learning to multiple data sets. Experimental results show that our method indeed discovers the common variables underlying high-dimensional nonlinear observations without assuming prior rigid model assumptions.

Analyzing signals arising from dynamical systems typically requires many modeling assumptions and parameter estimation. In high dimensions, this modeling is particularly difficult due to the "curse of dimensionality". In this paper, we propose a method for building an intrinsic representation of such signals in a purely data-driven manner. First, we apply a manifold learning technique, diffusion maps, to learn the intrinsic model of the latent variables of the dynamical system, solely from the measurements. Second, we use concepts and tools from control theory and build a linear contracting observer to estimate the latent variables in a sequential manner from new incoming measurements. The effectiveness of the presented framework is demonstrated by applying it to a toy problem and to a music analysis application. In these examples we show that our method reveals the intrinsic variables of the analyzed dynamical systems.

In this paper, we address the problem of multiple view data fusion in the presence of noise and interferences. Recent studies have approached this problem using kernel methods, by relying particularly on a product of kernels constructed separately for each view. From a graph theory point of view, we analyze this fusion approach in a discrete setting. More specifically, based on a statistical model for the connectivity between data points, we propose an algorithm for the selection of the kernel bandwidth, a parameter, which, as we show, has important implications on the robustness of this fusion approach to interferences. Then, we consider the fusion of audio-visual speech signals measured by a single microphone and by a video camera pointed to the face of the speaker. Specifically, we address the task of voice activity detection, i.e., the detection of speech and non-speech segments, in the presence of structured interferences such as keyboard taps and office noise. We propose an algorithm for voice activity detection based on the audio-visual signal. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms competing fusion and voice activity detection approaches. In addition, we demonstrate that a proper selection of the kernel bandwidth indeed leads to improved performance.

The analysis of data sets arising from multiple sensors has drawn significant research attention over the years. Traditional methods, including kernel-based methods, are typically incapable of capturing nonlinear geometric structures. We introduce a latent common manifold model underlying multiple sensor observations for the purpose of multimodal data fusion. A method based on alternating diffusion is presented and analyzed; we provide theoretical analysis of the method under the latent common manifold model. To exemplify the power of the proposed framework, experimental results in several applications are reported.