Artificial Intelligence

July 1, 2006

Reading 1

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Retrieved from http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/undergraduate/ai.html

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the attempt to build artificial systems that have intelligent behaviour.

There are two main directions of research:

  • one is to understand natural intelligence by the use of computer models.
  • the other provides techniques and technology for building systems capable of intelligent decisions and actions.

Thus AI is both a science and an engineering discipline. Applications of AI range from ‘smart’ controllers for household devices, to computers that can converse in English, play games, recognise objects in images, make expert diagnoses, do intelligent web searches or act as the brain of a robot.

AI has links with neurophysiology (the study of the structure and function of the nervous system), psychology, philosophy, engineering, computer science and linguistics. An example area of special interest is Computational Linguistics, which includes mathematical approaches to linguistics, the use of computational models in linguistics, computer speech and language processing, and natural language engineering.

Some Examples of AI Research

Screening video sequences to detect abnormal behaviour

Artificial Intelligence has a variety of applications. Crime prevention is one area which has benefited from the development of the intelligent machine. For example, the BEHAVE research group, in partnership with the Joseph Bell Centre for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning, is currently developing a system capable of anticipating criminal behaviour by analysing video sequences.

Reading 2

Robots Can Ape Us, But Will They Ever Get Real?

Retrieved from http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/          

One of the most profound questions of engineering, arguably, is whether we will ever create human-level consciousness in a machine. In the meantime, robots continue to take tiny little bot steps in the direction of faux humanity. Take Quasi, for instance, a robot dreamed up by Carnegie Mellon students that mimics the behavior of a 12-year-old boy [see "Heart of a New Machine" by Kim Krieger, in this issue]. Quasi’s “moods” depend on what?s been happening in his environment, but rather than being driven by prepubescent biology, they are architected by an elaborately scripted software-based behavioral model that triggers his responses. Quasi lets you know how he’s “feeling” through the changing colors of his LED eyes and his body language.

Other technologies are emulating more straightforward human traits. In the 9 June issue of Science, Vivek Maheshwari and Ravi F. Saraf of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln described their invention of a sensor that could allow robots to perceive temperature, pressure, and texture with exquisite sensitivity. Their sensor can detect surface details to within a pressure of about 10 kilopascals and distinguish features as small as 40 micrometers across?a sensitivity comparable to that of a human finger.

The Nebraska team is working on medical applications for the sensor. But it’s the idea of covering portions of a robot’s surface, particularly its “hands,” with these sensors that’s been making headlines.

Right now there are robots with increasingly sophisticated perceptual abilities and small behavioral repertoires operating in real-life environments. There are underwater vehicles that can map large swathes of sea bottom with total autonomy. There are computers operating on big problems at blazing computational speeds. But we still seem to be far away from that moment when our computational devices become autonomous entities with minds and brains—or the machine equivalent—of their own.

People have speculated about such a moment for decades, and most recently, ideas surrounding the questions of whether and when machine intelligence could equal and then surpass our own biological braininess have been subsumed into something called the Singularity. Popularized by science-fiction author and computer scientist Vernor Vinge in a 1983 article in Omni magazine, it has its early roots in the ideas of such cyberneticists as John von Neumann and Alan Turing. Notions about the Singularity—when it will happen, how it will happen, what it means for human beings and human civilization—come in several flavors. Its most well-known champions are roboticist Hans Moravec and computer scientist Raymond Kurzweil, who argue that when machine sapience kicks in, the era of human supremacy will be over. But it will be a good-news/bad-news situation: Moravec sees an era of indulgent leisure and an end to poverty and want; Kurzweil looks forward to uploading his brain into a computer memory and living on, in effect, indefinitely. But ultimately there’s also a good chance we’ll be booted off our little planet. Moravec goes so far as to predict that this massive machine intelligence will absorb the entire universe and everything in it, and that we will become part of the contents of this greater-than-human intelligence?s infinite knowledge database.

How would it work? According to Vinge’s vision, once computer performance and storage capacity rival those of animals—a phase we are beginning to enter—superhumanly intelligent machines capable of producing ever more intelligent machines will simply take over. This intellectual runaway, writes Vinge, “will probably occur faster than any technical revolution seen so far. The precipitating event will likely be unexpected—perhaps even to the researchers involved. (‘But all our previous models were catatonic! We were just tweaking some parameters….’) If networking is widespread enough (into ubiquitous embedded systems), it may seem as if our artifacts as a whole had suddenly wakened.”

Reading 3

Backpropagation Artificial Neural Network To Detect Hyper thermic Seizures In Rats

Retrieved from http://www.ojhas.org/issue4/2002-4-1.htm                

Abstract:

A three-layered feed-forward back-propagation Artificial Neural Network was used to classify the seizure episodes in rats. Seizure patterns were induced by subjecting anesthetized rats to a Biological Oxygen Demand incubator at 45-47for 30 to 60 minutes. Selected fast Fourier transform data of one second epochs of electroencephalogram were used to train and test the network for the classification of seizure and normal patterns. The results indicate that the present network with the architecture of 40-12-1 (input-hidden-output nodes) agrees with manual scoring of seizure and normal patterns with a high recognition rate of 98.6%.
Key Words: Artificial Neural Network, fast Fourier transform, electroencephalogram, Hyperthermic seizures

 

 

Introduction

Heat stroke or hyperthermia is one of the most serious of the disorders that may cause seizures. Literatures suggest that continuous exposure to high environmental heat as well as by hot water pour over the head generate seizures in both man and animals.(1,2) Several computer algorithms and programs for automatic detection of epileptic transients were developed but these methods were found unable to recognize the exceptions and minimize the number of false detections. Alternatively, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been successfully implemented for many pattern classification problems including detection of epileptic seizures.(3-5) However, most of the previous ANN based methods use measures of the electroencephalogram (EEG) such as amplitude, width, slope and sharpness of series of consecutive waves, measures thought to reflect in a general sense what expert clinicians attempt during EEG interpretation. In the present work, instead of using the physical characteristics of EEG signals, fast Fourier transform (FFT) has been used for the training and testing of the ANN as it conveys more information with respect to conventional analog EEG records.(6)

Materials and Methods

The experiment was carried out on male Charles Foster rats weighing 200-250 grams. Rats were housed in the animal room that was artificially illuminated with a 12 light cycle (7.00 A.M. to 7.00 P. M.) and the ambient room temperature maintained at 24?1. Rats were anaesthetized with Urethane anaesthesia (1.6gm/kg, I.P.) and three stainless steel screw electrodes were aseptically fixed on the rat’s head under stereotaxic guidance. Two electrodes were placed on bilateral fronto-parietal region and one grounding electrode at the anterior most region of the skull to record the differential EEG patterns. Anaesthetized rats after electrode implantation were subjected to the thermal environment in the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) incubator with preset temperature at 45-47.(1) Seizure patterns in EEG recording were observed after 30 to 60 minutes on start of incubation.

Single channel analog EEG was recorded with the standard amplifier setting.(7) Signals were simultaneously recorded in the computer hard disk following digitization of the traces at 256 Hz with help of an analog to digital converter (ADLiNK, 8112HG, NuDAQ, Taiwan) and its supporting software (VISUAL LAB-M, Version 2.0c, Blue Pearl laboratory, USA). The digitized data were fragmented in 1 second epochs (256 data points) and stored in separate files. Each epoch was pre-processed for noise reduction before final FFT or power spectrum analysis. At first, the DC value was subtracted from the data and then the base line movement was reduced. In the final step of pre-processing, the data were band pass filtered with cutoff frequencies of 0.25 and 30 Hz, as the maximum frequency component of interest in anesthetized animal is less than 25 Hz.(8) These filtered data epochs were processed for FFT or power spectrum calculation before being used as input for ANN.

Three layered feed-forward back-propagation network was used for detecting the seizures. The network was implemented via software by using C++ programming language on a computer.(9) The individual computational elements that make up most artificial neural systems models are more often referred to as processing elements (PEs). Like a neuron, a PE has many inputs but only single output, which can fan out to many other PEs in the network. The input ith receives from the jth PE is indicated as xj. Each connection to the ith PE has associated with a quantity called weight or connection strength. The weight on the connection from the node jth to ith node is denoted as wij. Each PE determines a net input value based on all it’s input connection.(10) The net input is calculated by summing the input values, gated (multiplied) by their corresponding weights. In other words, the net input to the ith unit can be written as:

neti = xj wij

Backpropagation network: The back-propagation learning involves propagation of the error backwards from the output layer to the hidden layers in order to determine the update for the weights leading to the units in a hidden layer. It does not have feedback connections, but errors are back propagated during training by using least mean square (LMS) error. Error in the output determines measures of hidden layer output errors, which are used as a bias for adjustment of connection weights between the input and hidden layers. Adjusting the two sets of weights between the pair of layers and recalculating the outputs is an iterative process that is carried on until the error falls below a tolerance level. Learning rate parameters scale the adjustments to the weights. The input of a particular element was calculated as the sum of the input values multiplied by connection strength (synaptic weight).(11) ANN was trained by FFT data of selected EEG data files. During training, the network was provided the inputs and the desired outputs, and the weights were adjusted accordingly so as to minimize the error between expected and desired outputs. After the training, the network was tested with unknown input patterns that were not present in the training set.

Results

The parameters of the ANN were set to get optimized performance of the network program over the entire set of EEG data. The training of the ANN was tried with variable number of hidden neurons as well as by assigning different learning rates parameters between the ranges of 0.01 to 0.5. The optimized performance of the ANN was found with structures of 40-12-1 (nodes of input, hidden and output) and with the learning rate of 0.1. The schematic diagram of the neural network used in the present study is shown in Fig.-1.

 

Figure-1: Schematic diagram of pattern recognition by ANN.For the present work, the error tolerance was assigned as 0.001 to activate the network and the network was trained for 1 million of iterations with different training sets having variable number of training patterns. The ANN was trained with a training data file containing 100 training patterns (same number of seizures and normal patterns) arranged randomly. After training, the network was tested for other files having patterns which were not present during training session. The performance of the network in detecting these events (normal and seizure) was calculated with help of following formula.

Performance of ANN (%) =

Number of correctly classified patterns

X 100

Total number of patterns tested

The results of the seizure and normal events detected by the network compared with those detected manually are summarized in the Table-1. Manually detected events were taken as standard and agreement percentage represent the percentage of epochs in which ANN detected seizure or normal events agreed with manually detected ones.

Table 1: Percentage agreement of the ANN in the recognition of seizure and normal patterns in comparison with manual scoring.

File No.

No. of Test patterns

Number of correctly detected patterns

Seizure

Normal

Total

1.

200

98

100

198

2.

200

98

99

197

3.

200

100

98

198

4.

200

99

98

197

5.

200

97

99

196

Total patterns tested

1000

492

494

986
(% agreement = 98.6)

Discussion

In the present work, an approach of detection of hyperthermia induced seizure and normal EEG patterns through ANN has been successfully implemented and experimentally tested. Features calculated from the FFT such as relative power in various frequency bands and then using an ANN to generate a single number that indicates the degree of which the event is a seizure (3, 12) was used previously to classify seizure patterns. Instead of the features from the FFT of the EEG signals, in the present work, the selected frequency band of digital values of the FFT from one second epochs of the EEG signals for the training and testing of the ANN were used. The EEG spike patterns represent very good agreement with the human manual scoring.(3) The performance of the detector was observed with moderately high recognition rate of 98.6% in recognizing normal and seizure patterns. The results suggest that ANN is capable of clustering the input information with greater reliability similar as shown by Hopfield and Tank (13) and these analyses can substantially increase the power of analysis. Once the ANN is trained, the converged weights were stored and re-used to obtain instantly the result of seizure detection. The accuracy of recognition however, was found sensitive to several parameters such as the recording environment, the type of signals used, sample size, training method, the choice of network model and preprocessing of signals. Although in this work, online seizure detection has not been done, which may be possible with the help of fast computer and dedicated software.

The advantages and disadvantages of ANN in the clinical diagnosis have not been extensively explored yet. However, by application of these results, the future scope can be outlined. The ANN can be useful in differential diagnosis because the network can be trained with large data sets derived from patients with clear-cut, but clinically different diseases. Since only 1-5% of long term recording of EEG signals are of interest in clinical diagnosis,(3) the ANN can become useful for online monitoring of pathological events. Furthermore, the technicians can easily be trained for the manual selection of the already detected events, whereas recognition of abnormal patterns in the background of ongoing EEG requires substantial experience.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Dr. Amit Kumar Ray, Reader, School of Biomedical Engineering, Institute of technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi (India) for providing necessary facilities for EEG data collection and processing for the experiment.

References

  1. Morimoto T, Nagao H, Sano N et al. Electroencephalographic study of rat hyperthermic seizures. Epilepsia. 1991;32(3):289-93.
  2. Ullal GR, Satishchandra P, Shankar SK. Hyperthermic seizures: an animal model for hot water epilepsy. Seizure. 1996;5(3):221-28.
  3. Jand?G, Seigel RM, Horv?th Z et al. Pattern recognition of the electroencephalogram by artificial neural networks. Electroencephal clin Neurophysiol. 1993;86:100-9.
  4. Webber WRS, Lesser RP, Richardson RT et al. An approach to seizure detection using an artificial neural network. Electroencephal clin Neurophysiol. 1996;98:250-72.
  5. Gabor AJ, Leach RR, Dowla FU. Automated seizure detection using a self organizing neural network. Electroencephal clin Neurophysiol. 1996;99:257-66.
  6. Sarbadhikari SN. A Neural network confirms that physical exercise reverses EEG changes in depressed rats. Med Engg & Phy. 1995;17(8):579-82.
  7. Sarbadhikari SN, Dey S, Ray AK. Chronic exercise alters EEG power spectra in an animal model of depression. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 1996;40(1):47-57.
  8. Goel V, Brambrink AM, Baykal A et al. Dominant frequency analysis of EEG reveals brain’s response during injury and recovery. IEEE Trans Biomed Engg. 1996;43(11):1083-92.
  9. Rao V, Rao, H. C++ Neural networks and fuzzy logic. First Edition. New Delhi: BPB Publications; 1996. p. 123-76.
  10. Freeman JA, Skapura, DM. Neural Networks: Algorithms, Applications and Programming Techniques. Addison Wesley: First ISE reprint; 1999.
  11. Rumelhart DE, Hinton GE, Williams RJ. Learning representations by back-propagating errors. Nature. 1986;323:533-36.
  12. Sharma A, Wilson SE, Roy R. EEG classification for estimating anesthetic depth during halothane anesthesia. In Proceedings of 14th annual international conference IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, New York. 1992. p. 2409-10.
  13. Hopfield JJ, Tank DW. Computing with neural circuit: a model. Science. 1986;223:625-33.


Embedded System

July 1, 2006

Embedded System


Ubiquitous

July 1, 2006

Ubiquitous


Wireless Networks

July 1, 2006

Wireless Networks


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