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Costal cartilage segmentation is crucial to various medical applications, necessitating precise and reliable techniques due to its complex anatomy and the importance of accurate diagnosis and surgical planning. We propose a novel deep learning-based approach called topology-guided deformable Mamba (TGDM) for costal cartilage segmentation. The TGDM is tailored to capture the intricate long-range costal cartilage relationships. Our method leverages a deformable model that integrates topological priors to enhance the adaptability and accuracy of the segmentation process. Furthermore, we developed a comprehensive benchmark that contains 165 cases for costal cartilage segmentation. This benchmark sets a new standard for evaluating costal cartilage segmentation techniques and provides a valuable resource for future research. Extensive experiments conducted on both in-domain benchmarks and out-of domain test sets demonstrate the superiority of our approach over existing methods, showing significant improvements in segmentation precision and robustness.

Text-Attributed Graphs (TAGs) enhance graph structures with natural language descriptions, enabling detailed representation of data and their relationships across a broad spectrum of real-world scenarios. Despite the potential for deeper insights, existing TAG representation learning primarily relies on supervised methods, necessitating extensive labeled data and limiting applicability across diverse contexts. This paper introduces a new self-supervised learning framework, Text-And-Graph Multi-View Alignment (TAGA), which overcomes these constraints by integrating TAGs' structural and semantic dimensions. TAGA constructs two complementary views: Text-of-Graph view, which organizes node texts into structured documents based on graph topology, and the Graph-of-Text view, which converts textual nodes and connections into graph data. By aligning representations from both views, TAGA captures joint textual and structural information. In addition, a novel structure-preserving random walk algorithm is proposed for efficient training on large-sized TAGs. Our framework demonstrates strong performance in zero-shot and few-shot scenarios across eight real-world datasets.

While Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) enhances the accuracy and relevance of responses by generative language models, it falls short in graph-based contexts where both textual and topological information are important. Naive RAG approaches inherently neglect the structural intricacies of textual graphs, resulting in a critical gap in the generation process. To address this challenge, we introduce $\textbf{Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation (GRAG)}$, which significantly enhances both the retrieval and generation processes by emphasizing the importance of subgraph structures. Unlike RAG approaches that focus solely on text-based entity retrieval, GRAG maintains an acute awareness of graph topology, which is crucial for generating contextually and factually coherent responses. Our GRAG approach consists of four main stages: indexing of $k$-hop ego-graphs, graph retrieval, soft pruning to mitigate the impact of irrelevant entities, and generation with pruned textual subgraphs. GRAG's core workflow-retrieving textual subgraphs followed by soft pruning-efficiently identifies relevant subgraph structures while avoiding the computational infeasibility typical of exhaustive subgraph searches, which are NP-hard. Moreover, we propose a novel prompting strategy that achieves lossless conversion from textual subgraphs to hierarchical text descriptions. Extensive experiments on graph multi-hop reasoning benchmarks demonstrate that in scenarios requiring multi-hop reasoning on textual graphs, our GRAG approach significantly outperforms current state-of-the-art RAG methods while effectively mitigating hallucinations., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures

Generating data with properties of interest by external users while following the right causation among its intrinsic factors is important yet has not been well addressed jointly. This is due to the long-lasting challenge of jointly identifying key latent variables, their causal relations, and their correlation with properties of interest, as well as how to leverage their discoveries toward causally controlled data generation. To address these challenges, we propose a novel deep generative framework called the Correlation-aware Causal Variational Auto-encoder (C2VAE). This framework simultaneously recovers the correlation and causal relationships between properties using disentangled latent vectors. Specifically, causality is captured by learning the causal graph on latent variables through a structural causal model, while correlation is learned via a novel correlation pooling algorithm. Extensive experiments demonstrate C2VAE's ability to accurately recover true causality and correlation, as well as its superiority in controllable data generation compared to baseline models., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures

The potential of automatic task-solving through Large Language Model (LLM)-based multi-agent collaboration has recently garnered widespread attention from both the research community and industry. While utilizing natural language to coordinate multiple agents presents a promising avenue for democratizing agent technology for general users, designing coordination strategies remains challenging with existing coordination frameworks. This difficulty stems from the inherent ambiguity of natural language for specifying the collaboration process and the significant cognitive effort required to extract crucial information (e.g. agent relationship, task dependency, result correspondence) from a vast amount of text-form content during exploration. In this work, we present a visual exploration framework to facilitate the design of coordination strategies in multi-agent collaboration. We first establish a structured representation for LLM-based multi-agent coordination strategy to regularize the ambiguity of natural language. Based on this structure, we devise a three-stage generation method that leverages LLMs to convert a user's general goal into an executable initial coordination strategy. Users can further intervene at any stage of the generation process, utilizing LLMs and a set of interactions to explore alternative strategies. Whenever a satisfactory strategy is identified, users can commence the collaboration and examine the visually enhanced execution result. We develop AgentCoord, a prototype interactive system, and conduct a formal user study to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach.

Assembly of dissimilar metals can be achieved by different methods, for example, casting, welding, and additive manufacturing (AM). However, undesired phases formed in liquid-phase assembling processes due to solute segregation during solidification diminish mechanical and other properties of the processed parts. In the present work, an open-source software named MaterialsMap, has been developed based on the CALculation of Phase Diagrams (CALPHAD) approach. The primary objective of MaterialsMap is to facilitate the design of an optimal composition pathway for assembling dissimilar alloys with liquid-phases based on the formation of desired and undesired phases along the pathway. In MaterialsMap, equilibrium thermodynamic calculations are used to predict equilibrium phases formed at slow cooling rate, while Scheil-Gulliver simulations are employed to predict non-equilibrium phases formed during rapid cooling. By combining these two simulations, MaterialsMap offers a thorough guide for understanding phase formation in various manufacturing processes, assisting users in making informed decisions during material selection and production. As a demonstration of this approach, a compositional pathway was designed from pure Al to pure Cu through Ag using MaterialsMap. The design was experimentally verified using resistance spot welding (RSW).

The deployment and application of Large Language Models (LLMs) is hindered by their memory inefficiency, computational demands, and the high costs of API inferences. Traditional distillation methods, which transfer the capabilities of LLMs to smaller models, often fail to determine whether the knowledge has been sufficiently transferred, potentially resulting in high costs or incomplete distillation. In this paper, we propose an Explanation-Guided LLMs Active Distillation (ELAD) framework that employs an active learning strategy to optimize the balance between annotation costs and model performance. To improve efficient sample selection, we introduce an explanation-guided sample selection method that identifies samples challenging its reasoning by exploiting uncertainties in explanation steps. Additionally, we present a customized LLM-annotated explanation revision technique where the teacher model detects and corrects flaws in the student model's reasoning. Our experiments across various reasoning datasets demonstrate that our framework significantly enhances the efficiency of LLM knowledge distillation.

Text-Attributed Graphs (TAGs) are graphs of connected textual documents. Graph models can efficiently learn TAGs, but their training heavily relies on human-annotated labels, which are scarce or even unavailable in many applications. Large language models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated remarkable capabilities in few-shot and zero-shot TAG learning, but they suffer from scalability, cost, and privacy issues. Therefore, in this work, we focus on synergizing LLMs and graph models with their complementary strengths by distilling the power of LLMs to a local graph model on TAG learning. To address the inherent gaps between LLMs (generative models for texts) and graph models (discriminative models for graphs), we propose first to let LLMs teach an interpreter with rich textual rationale and then let a student model mimic the interpreter's reasoning without LLMs' textual rationale. Extensive experiments validate the efficacy of our proposed framework., Comment: CIKM 2024

Recently, Large Language Model based Autonomous system(LLMAS) has gained great popularity for its potential to simulate complicated behaviors of human societies. One of its main challenges is to present and analyze the dynamic events evolution of LLMAS. In this work, we present a visualization approach to explore detailed statuses and agents' behavior within LLMAS. We propose a general pipeline that establishes a behavior structure from raw LLMAS execution events, leverages a behavior summarization algorithm to construct a hierarchical summary of the entire structure in terms of time sequence, and a cause trace method to mine the causal relationship between agent behaviors. We then develop AgentLens, a visual analysis system that leverages a hierarchical temporal visualization for illustrating the evolution of LLMAS, and supports users to interactively investigate details and causes of agents' behaviors. Two usage scenarios and a user study demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of our AgentLens.

Learning interpretable representations of data generative latent factors is an important topic for the development of artificial intelligence. With the rise of the large multimodal model, it can align images with text to generate answers. In this work, we propose a framework to comprehensively explain each latent variable in the generative models using a large multimodal model. We further measure the uncertainty of our generated explanations, quantitatively evaluate the performance of explanation generation among multiple large multimodal models, and qualitatively visualize the variations of each latent variable to learn the disentanglement effects of different generative models on explanations. Finally, we discuss the explanatory capabilities and limitations of state-of-the-art large multimodal models., Comment: ICLR 2024 Workshop on Reliable and Responsible Foundation Models

The rise of deep learning has ushered in significant progress in computer vision (CV) tasks, yet the "black box" nature of these models often precludes interpretability. This challenge has spurred the development of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) by generating explanations to AI's decision-making process. An explanation is aimed to not only faithfully reflect the true reasoning process (i.e., faithfulness) but also align with humans' reasoning (i.e., alignment). Within XAI, visual explanations employ visual cues to elucidate the reasoning behind machine learning models, particularly in image processing, by highlighting images' critical areas important to predictions. Despite the considerable body of research in visual explanations, standardized benchmarks for evaluating them are seriously underdeveloped. In particular, to evaluate alignment, existing works usually merely illustrate a few images' visual explanations, or hire some referees to report the explanation quality under ad-hoc questionnaires. However, this cannot achieve a standardized, quantitative, and comprehensive evaluation. To address this issue, we develop a benchmark for visual explanation, consisting of eight datasets with human explanation annotations from various domains, accommodating both post-hoc and intrinsic visual explanation methods. Additionally, we devise a visual explanation pipeline that includes data loading, explanation generation, and method evaluation. Our proposed benchmarks facilitate a fair evaluation and comparison of visual explanation methods. Building on our curated collection of datasets, we benchmarked eight existing visual explanation methods and conducted a thorough comparison across four selected datasets using six alignment-based and causality-based metrics. Our benchmark will be accessible through our website https://xaidataset.github.io.

Visual explanation (attention)-guided learning uses not only labels but also explanations to guide model reasoning process. While visual attention-guided learning has shown promising results, it requires a large number of explanation annotations that are time-consuming to prepare. However, in many real-world situations, it is usually desired to prompt the model with visual attention without model retraining. For example, when doing AI-assisted cancer classification on a medical image, users (e.g., clinicians) can provide the AI model with visual attention prompt on which areas are indispensable and which are precluded. Despite its promising objectives, achieving visual attention-prompted prediction presents several major challenges: 1) How can the visual prompt be effectively integrated into the model's reasoning process? 2) How should the model handle samples that lack visual prompts? 3) What is the impact on the model's performance when a visual prompt is imperfect? This paper introduces a novel framework for attention-prompted prediction and learning, utilizing visual prompts to steer the model's reasoning process. To improve performance in non-prompted situations and align it with prompted scenarios, we propose a co-training approach for both non-prompted and prompted models, ensuring they share similar parameters and activations. Additionally, for instances where the visual prompt does not encompass the entire input image, we have developed innovative attention prompt refinement methods. These methods interpolate the incomplete prompts while maintaining alignment with the model's explanations. Extensive experiments on four datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework in enhancing predictions for samples both with and without prompt.

Explainable AI seeks to bring light to the decision-making processes of black-box models. Traditional saliency-based methods, while highlighting influential data segments, often lack semantic understanding. Recent advancements, such as Concept Activation Vectors (CAVs) and Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs), offer concept-based explanations but necessitate human-defined concepts. However, human-annotated concepts are expensive to attain. This paper introduces the Concept Bottleneck Surrogate Models (SurroCBM), a novel framework that aims to explain the black-box models with automatically discovered concepts. SurroCBM identifies shared and unique concepts across various black-box models and employs an explainable surrogate model for post-hoc explanations. An effective training strategy using self-generated data is proposed to enhance explanation quality continuously. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the efficacy of SurroCBM in concept discovery and explanation, underscoring its potential in advancing the field of explainable AI.

Deep generative models have been widely used for their ability to generate realistic data samples in various areas, such as images, molecules, text, and speech. One major goal of data generation is controllability, namely to generate new data with desired properties. Despite growing interest in the area of controllable generation, significant challenges still remain, including 1) disentangling desired properties with unrelated latent variables, 2) out-of-distribution property control, and 3) objective optimization for out-of-distribution property control. To address these challenges, in this paper, we propose a general framework to enhance VAE-based data generators with property controllability and ensure disentanglement. Our proposed objective can be optimized on both data seen and unseen in the training set. We propose a training procedure to train the objective in a semi-supervised manner by iteratively conducting mutual mappings between the data and properties. The proposed framework is implemented on four VAE-based controllable generators to evaluate its performance on property error, disentanglement, generation quality, and training time. The results indicate that our proposed framework enables more precise control over the properties of generated samples in a short training time, ensuring the disentanglement and keeping the validity of the generated samples.

Traceability systems are important for solving problems due to the increasing scale of the global supply chain, such as food safety crises and market disorder. Blockchain, as an immutable and decentralized ledger, is able to optimize the traditional traceability system by ensuring the transparency and reliability of the system data. However, the use of blockchain technology may lead to a rapid increase in the complexity of system design and development. It is challenging to address widespread and complicated business, changeable processes, and massive data in practice, which are the main factors restricting the wide application of a blockchain-based traceability system (BTS). Therefore, in this paper, we reviewed relevant studies and proposed a reference architecture for BTSs. The proposed reference architecture can improve the cohesiveness, maintainability, and extensibility of BTSs through domain-driven design (DDD) and microservices. Considering the efficiency reduction caused by massive data and complicated data structure, we further changed the traditional single blockchain framework into multiple sub-chain networks, which could improve development efficiency and system performance. With the guidance of the architecture trade-off analysis method (ATAM), we evaluated our reference architecture and implemented a prototype in the salmon supply chain scenario. The results show that our solution is effective and adaptable to meet the requirements of BTSs., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, Asia Pacific Structural Engineering and Construction conference (APSEC) 2022

Natural language interfaces (NLIs) enable users to flexibly specify analytical intentions in data visualization. However, diagnosing the visualization results without understanding the underlying generation process is challenging. Our research explores how to provide explanations for NLIs to help users locate the problems and further revise the queries. We present XNLI, an explainable NLI system for visual data analysis. The system introduces a Provenance Generator to reveal the detailed process of visual transformations, a suite of interactive widgets to support error adjustments, and a Hint Generator to provide query revision hints based on the analysis of user queries and interactions. Two usage scenarios of XNLI and a user study verify the effectiveness and usability of the system. Results suggest that XNLI can significantly enhance task accuracy without interrupting the NLI-based analysis process., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. A preprint version of a publication at IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2023

Developing deep generative models has been an emerging field due to the ability to model and generate complex data for various purposes, such as image synthesis and molecular design. However, the advancement of deep generative models is limited by challenges to generate objects that possess multiple desired properties: 1) the existence of complex correlation among real-world properties is common but hard to identify; 2) controlling individual property enforces an implicit partially control of its correlated properties, which is difficult to model; 3) controlling multiple properties under various manners simultaneously is hard and under-explored. We address these challenges by proposing a novel deep generative framework that recovers semantics and the correlation of properties through disentangled latent vectors. The correlation is handled via an explainable mask pooling layer, and properties are precisely retained by generated objects via the mutual dependence between latent vectors and properties. Our generative model preserves properties of interest while handling correlation and conflicts of properties under a multi-objective optimization framework. The experiments demonstrate our model's superior performance in generating data with desired properties., Comment: This paper has been accepted by NeurIPS 2022

Designing and generating new data under targeted properties has been attracting various critical applications such as molecule design, image editing and speech synthesis. Traditional hand-crafted approaches heavily rely on expertise experience and intensive human efforts, yet still suffer from the insufficiency of scientific knowledge and low throughput to support effective and efficient data generation. Recently, the advancement of deep learning has created the opportunity for expressive methods to learn the underlying representation and properties of data. Such capability provides new ways of determining the mutual relationship between the structural patterns and functional properties of the data and leveraging such relationships to generate structural data, given the desired properties. This article is a systematic review that explains this promising research area, commonly known as controllable deep data generation. First, the article raises the potential challenges and provides preliminaries. Then the article formally defines controllable deep data generation, proposes a taxonomy on various techniques and summarizes the evaluation metrics in this specific domain. After that, the article introduces exciting applications of controllable deep data generation, experimentally analyzes and compares existing works. Finally, this article highlights the promising future directions of controllable deep data generation and identifies five potential challenges., Comment: This survey has been accepted by ACM Computing Surveys