Typical acoustic scenes consist of multiple superimposed sources, where some of them represent desired signals, but often many of them are undesired sources, e.g., interferers or noise. Hence, source separation and extraction, i.e., the estimation of the desired source signals based on observed mixtures, is one of the central problems in audio signal processing. A promising class of approaches to address such problems is based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA), an unsupervised machine learning technique. These methods enjoyed a lot of attention from the research community due to the small number of assumptions that have to be made about the considered problem. Furthermore, the resulting generalization ability to unseen acoustic conditions, their mathematical rigor and the simplicity of resulting algorithms have been appreciated by many researchers working in audio signal processing. However, knowledge about the acoustic scenario is often available ...

In this thesis, a general solution to the component separation problem in images is introduced. Unlike most existing works, the spatial dependencies of images are modelled in the separation process with the use of Markov random fields (MRFs). In the MRFs model, Cauchy density is used for the gradient images. We provide a general Bayesian framework for the estimation of the parameters of this model. Due to the intractability of the problem we resort to numerical solutions for the joint maximization of the a posteriori distribution of the sources, the mixing matrix and the noise variances. For numerical solution, four different methods are proposed. In first method, the difficulty of working analytically with general Gibbs distributions of MRF is overcome by using an approximate density. In this approach, the Gibbs distribution is modelled by the product of directional Gaussians. The ...

Most cognitive processes in the brain are reflected through several aspects simultaneously, allowing us to observe the same process from different biological phenomena. The diverse nature of these biological processes suggests that a better understanding of cerebral activity may be achieved through multimodal measurements. One of the possible multimodal brain recording settings is the combination of electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which is one of the main topics of this thesis. Two groups of EEG-fMRI integration approaches are possible. The first group, commonly called model-based techniques, are very popular due to the fact that the results from such analyses confirm or disprove a specific hypothesis. However, such hypotheses are not always available, requiring a more explorative approach to analyze the data. This exploration is possible with the second group of approaches, the so-called data-driven methods. The data-driven ...

The problem of signal separation is a very broad and fundamental one. A powerful paradigm within which signal separation can be achieved is the assumption that the signals/sources are statistically independent of one another. This is known as Independent Component Analysis (ICA). In this thesis, the theoretical aspects and derivation of ICA are examined, from which disparate approaches to signal separation are drawn together in a unifying framework. This is followed by a review of signal separation techniques based on ICA. Second order statistics based output decorrelation methods are employed to try to solve the challenging problem of separating convolutively mixed signals, in the context of mainly audio source separation and the Cocktail Party Problem. Various optimisation techniques are devised to implement second order signal separation of both artificially mixed signals and real mixtures. A study of the advantages and ...

Epilepsy is a neurological condition that manifests in epileptic seizures as a result of an abnormal, synchronous activity of a large group of neurons. Depending on the affected brain regions, seizures produce various severe clinical symptoms. Epilepsy cannot be cured and in many cases is not controlled by medication either. Surgical resection of the region responsible for generating the epileptic seizures might offer remedy for these patients. Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measure the changes of brain activity in time over different locations of the brain. As such, they provide valuable information on the nature, the timing and the spatial origin of the epileptic activity. Unfortunately, both techniques record activity of different brain and artefact sources as well. Hence, EEG and fMRI signals are characterised by low signal to noise ratio. Data quality and the vast amount ...

Inverse scattering is relevant to a very large class of problems, where the unknown structure of a scattering object is estimated by measuring the scattered field produced by known probing waves. Therefore, for more than three decades, the promises of non-invasive imaging inspection by electromagnetic probing radiations have been justifying a research interest on these techniques. Several application areas are involved, such as civil and industrial engineering, non-destructive testing and medical imaging as well as subsurface inspection for oil exploration or unexploded devices. In spite of this relevance, most scattering tomography techniques are not reliable enough to solve practical problems. Indeed, the nonlinear relationship between the scattered field and the object function and the robustness of the inversion algorithms are still open issues. In particular, microwave tomography presents a number of specific difficulties that make it much more involved to ...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) constitutes a non-invasive medical imaging technique that allows the exploration of the inner anatomy, tissues, and physiological processes of the body. Among the different MRI applications, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has slowly become an essential tool for investigating the brain behavior and, nowadays, it plays a fundamental role in clinical and neurophysiological research. Due to its particular nature, specialized signal processing techniques are required in order to analyze the fMRI data properly. Among the various related techniques that have been developed over the years, the General Linear Model (GLM) is one of the most widely used approaches, and it usually appears as a default in many specialized software toolboxes for fMRI. On the other end, Blind Source Separation (BSS) methods constitute the most common alternative to GLM, especially when no prior information regarding the brain ...

In numerous signal processing applications one disposes of multiple probes, delivering simultaneously information about one or multiple observed processes. The resulting multidimensional time series are often highly redundant and may contain stochastic contributions. The perception of the useful information becomes therefore very difficult and sometimes impossible. Thus, the major issue of concern of this thesis resides in the development of novel algorithms for the extraction of the salient and characteristic features of multidimensional time series. The proposed algorithms are based on parametric signal processing, namely we assume that the features of the experimental data can be represented efficiently by a specific model. We present a global framework for the selection of a specific model out of the large span of techniques proposed in the literature. For the selection of the model classes we use, in addition to prior knowledge about ...

Due to the extensive growth of big data applications, the widespread use of multisensor technologies, and the need for efficient data representations, multidimensional techniques are a primary tool for many signal processing applications. Multidimensional arrays or tensors allow a natural representation of high-dimensional data. Therefore, they are particularly suited for tasks involving multi-modal data sources such as biomedical sensor readings or multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna arrays. While tensor-based techniques were still in their infancy several decades ago, nowadays, they have already proven their effectiveness in various applications. There are many different tensor decompositions in the literature, and each finds use in diverse signal processing fields. In this thesis, we focus on two tensor factorization models: the rank-(Lr,Lr,1) Block-Term Decomposition (BTD) and the Multilinear Generalized Singular Value Decomposition (ML-GSVD) that we propose in this thesis. The ML-GSVD is an extension ...

The production and delivery of audio for television involve many creative and technical challenges. One of them is concerned with the level balance between the foreground speech (also referred to as dialogue) and the background elements, e.g., music, sound effects, and ambient sounds. Background elements are fundamental for the narrative and for creating an engaging atmosphere, but they can mask the dialogue, which the audience wishes to follow in a comfortable way. Very different individual factors of the people in the audience clash with the creative freedom of the content creators. As a result, service providers receive regular complaints about difficulties in understanding the dialogue because of too loud background sounds. While this has been a known issue for at least three decades, works analyzing the problem and up-to-date statics were scarce before the contributions in this work. Enabling the ...

Various real-life data such as time series and multi-sensor recordings can be represented by vectors and matrices, which are one-way and two-way arrays of numerical values, respectively. Valuable information can be extracted from these measured data matrices by means of matrix factorizations in a broad range of applications within signal processing, data mining, and machine learning. While matrix-based methods are powerful and well-known tools for various applications, they are limited to single-mode variations, making them ill-suited to tackle multi-way data without loss of information. Higher-order tensors are a natural extension of vectors (first order) and matrices (second order), enabling us to represent multi-way arrays of numerical values, which have become ubiquitous in signal processing and data mining applications. By leveraging the powerful utitilies offered by tensor decompositions such as compression and uniqueness properties, we can extract more information from multi-way ...

This doctorate thesis focuses on sparse regression, a statistical modeling tool for selecting valuable predictors in underdetermined linear models. By imposing different constraints on the structure of the variable vector in the regression problem, one obtains estimates which have sparse supports, i.e., where only a few of the elements in the response variable have non-zero values. The thesis collects six papers which, to a varying extent, deals with the applications, implementations, modifications, translations, and other analysis of such problems. Sparse regression is often used to approximate additive models with intricate, non-linear, non-smooth or otherwise problematic functions, by creating an underdetermined model consisting of candidate values for these functions, and linear response variables which selects among the candidates. Sparse regression is therefore a widely used tool in applications such as, e.g., image processing, audio processing, seismological and biomedical modeling, but is ...

The brain is the most important signal processing unit in the human body. It is responsible for receiving, processing and storing information. One of the possibilities to study brain functioning is by placing electrodes on the scalp and recording the synchronous neuronal activity of the brain. Such a recording measures a combination of active processes in the whole brain. Unfortunately, it is also contaminated by artifacts. By extracting the artifacts and removing them, cleaned recordings can be investigated. Furthermore, it is easier to look at specific brain activities, like an epileptic seizure, than at a combination. In this thesis, we present different mathematical techniques that can be used to extract individual contributing sources from the measured signals for this purpose. We focused on Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Canonical/ Parallel Factor Analysis (CPA). We show that ...

The widespread use of mobile internet and smart applications has led to an explosive growth in mobile data traffic. With the rise of smart homes, smart buildings, and smart cities, this demand is ever growing since future communication systems will require the integration of multiple networks serving diverse sectors, domains and applications, such as multimedia, virtual or augmented reality, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication / the Internet of things (IoT), automotive applications, and many more. Therefore, in the future, the communication systems will not only be required to provide Gbps wireless connectivity but also fulfill other requirements such as low latency and massive machine type connectivity while ensuring the quality of service. Without significant technological advances to increase the system capacity, the existing telecommunications infrastructure will be unable to support these multi-dimensional requirements. This poses an important demand for suitable waveforms with ...

Face recognition has been an active area of study for both computer vision and image processing communities, not only for biometrics but also for human-computer interaction applications. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the existing 3D face recognition techniques and seek biologically motivated methods to improve them. We especially look at findings in psychophysics and cognitive science for insights. We propose a biologically motivated computational model, and focus on the earlier stages of the model, whose performance is critical for the later stages. Our emphasis is on automatic localization of facial features. We first propose a strong unsupervised learning algorithm for flexible and automatic training of Gaussian mixture models and use it in a novel feature-based algorithm for facial fiducial point localization. We also propose a novel structural correction algorithm to evaluate the quality of landmarking and ...