Method and Apparatus for Training a Neural Network to Learn Hierarchical Representations of Objects and to Detect and Classify Objects With Uncertain Training Data

The present invention relates generally to the field of neural information processing and, more particularly, to a hierarchical apparatus and concomitant method for learning and integrating features from multiple resolutions for detecting and/or classifying objects. The present method and apparatus also address supervised learning where there are potential errors in the training data.

Neural network modeling has been developed to solve problems ranging from natural language understanding to visual processing. A neural network is a computational model composed of neurons (also known as nodes, units or perceptrons) and connections between the nodes. The strength of each connection is expressed by a numerical value called a weight, which can be modified. The activation of a given node is based on the activations of the nodes that have connections directed at that node and the weights on those connections.

In contrast to conventional computers, which are programmed to perform specific tasks, most neural networks do not follow rigidly programmed rules and are generally taught or trained. Generally, feed-forward neural network can be implemented as functions y(f,w) of a vector f of inputs and a weight or parameter vector w. The weight vector is modified such that the neural network optimally estimates some quantity that depends on f. The process of adjusting w is commonly referred to as training, where the methods for training are referred to as training algorithms. Most neural network trainings involve the use of an error function. The weight vector is adjusted so as to minimize the sum of average of the error function on a set of training samples. A penalty term is generally applied to the error to restrict the weight vector in some manner that is thought desirable. Given the resulting objective function, various training methods are used to minimized it or involve the use of some form of gradient descent.

For instance, in image analysis a digital photographic image can be introduced to a neural network for identification, and it will active the relevant nodes for producing the correct answer based on its training. Connections between individual nodes are "strengthened" (resistance turned down) when a task is performed correctly and "weakened" (resistance turned up) if performed incorrectly. In this manner a neural network is trained and provides more accurate output with each repetition of a task.

The field of image analysis is well-suited for computer-assisted search using neural network. Generally, images contain a vast quantity of information where only a small fraction of the information is relevant to a given task. The process of identifying the relevant fraction from the vast quantity of information often challenges the capabilities of powerful computers. Although neural networks have demonstrated its flexibility as pattern-recognition apparatus for detecting relevant information from images, they scale poorly with the size of the images. As the size of the image and neural network increases, the computational expense and training time may become prohibitive for many applications.

For example, radiologists are faced with the difficult task of analyzing large quantities of mammograms to detect subtle cues of breast cancer which may include the detection of microcalcifications. A difficult problem is the detection of small target objects in large images. The problem is challenging because searching a large image is computationally expensive and small targets on the order of a few pixels in size have relatively few distinctive features which enable them to be identified from "non-targets".

A second problem is the need for using real data (training samples) to train a neural network to detect and classify objects. Such real data will almost inevitably contain errors, thereby distorting the conditional probability that an input vector came from an instance of the class that a neural network is designed to detect or from a specific position on the image.

Therefore, a need exists in the art for a method and apparatus for automatically learning and integrating features from multiple resolutions for detecting and/or classifying objects. Additionally, a need exists in the art for a supervised learning method that addresses errors in the training data.

A signal processing apparatus and concomitant method for learning and integrating features from multiple resolutions for detecting and/or classifying objects are presented. Neural networks in a pattern tree structure/architecture with tree-structured descriptions of objects in terms of simple sub-patterns, are grown and trained to detect and integrate the sub-patterns. The method grows the pattern tree from the root to the leaves, and integrates the outputs of the neural networks to produce an overall estimate of the probability that an object of interest is present. A specific tree-mirror pattern tree structure having feature networks and integration networks is used to improve feature detection.

A plurality of objective functions and their approximations are also presented to train the neural networks to detect sub-patterns of features of some class of objects. Objective functions for training neural networks to detect objects whose positions in the training data are uncertain and for addressing supervised learning where there are potential errors in the training data are also presented.

The teachings of the present invention can be readily understood by considering the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a signal processing system that incorporates a neural network that embodies the teachings of the present invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates a pattern tree for describing objects in terms of simple sub-patterns;

FIG. 3 illustrates a method for learning pattern trees;

FIG. 4 illustrates a pattern tree with a "tree-mirroring" structure;

FIG. 5 illustrates the general processing blocks of a typical CAD system for microcalcificaton detection;

FIG. 6 illustrates a conventional hierarchical pyramid/neural network (HPNN);

FIG. 7 illustrates an apparatus for generating an "integrated feature pyramid" (IFP) for providing inputs to a neural network;

FIG. 8 illustrates a second embodiment of an apparatus for generating an "integrated feature pyramid" (IFP); and

FIG. 9 illustrates the method of applying a hierarchical pyramid/neural network architecture to the problem of finding microcalcifications in mammograms.

FIG. 1 depicts a signal processing system 100 that utilizes the present inventions. The signal processing system consists of a signal receiving section 130, a signal processing section 110 and input/output devices 120.

Signal receiving section 130 serves to receive input data signals, such as images from, including by nut limited to, aerial imagery or medical imaging devices. Signal receiving section 130 includes a data receiving section 132 and a data storage section 134. Data receiving section 130 may include a number of devices such as a modem and an analog-to-digital converter. A modem is a well-known device that comprises a modulator and a demodulator for sending and receiving binary data over a telephone line, while an analog-to-digital converter converts analog signals into a digital form. Hence, signal receiving section 130 may receive input signals "on-line" and, if necessary, convert them to a digital form from a number of devices such as a computer, a camera, a video player/decoder or various imaging devices, e.g., medical devices. In fact, the input signals is not limited to images and may comprise any data that has a "natural scale", e.g., drug discovery data (molecular data in general) and speech data.

The data storage section 134 serves to store input signals received by data receiving section 132. Data storage section 134 may incorporate a number of devices such as a disk drive, semiconductor memory or other storage media. These storage devices provide a method for applying a delay to the input signals or to simply store the input signals for subsequent processing.

In the preferred embodiment, the signal processing section 110 comprises a general purpose computer having at least one neural network 112, at least one central processing unit (CPU) 114 and a memory 116 for processing images. The neural network 112 can be a physical device constructed from various filters and/or processors which is coupled to the CPU through a communication channel. Alternatively, the neural network can be represented by a software implementation residing in the memory of the signal processing section.

The signal processing section 110 is also coupled to a plurality of input and output devices 120 such as a keyboard, a mouse, a video monitor or storage devices, including but not limited to, a hard disk drive, a floppy drive or a compact disk drive. The input devices serve to provide inputs (e.g., data, commands and software applications) to the signal processing section for processing the input images, while the output devices serve to display or record the results.

Each neural network 112 includes at least an input layer, an output layer and optional intermediate layers (also known as hidden layers). Each layer includes at least one node. The neural network undergoes supervised training in accordance with the methods described below. The trained neural network is then applied to an input image for detecting and/or classifying a target object.

The CPU 114 of the signal processing section performs various signal processing functions, including but not limited to, preprocessing the input images (e.g., constructing an image pyramid for each input image), training the neural network, processing the output signal from the neural network and growing pattern trees as discussed below.

The present invention addresses the poor scaling property of a neural network by applying the well known concept of "pattern trees" which are tree-structured descriptions of objects in terms of simple sub-patterns as illustrated in FIG. 2. Each node of the tree is a small template which matches some piece of the object at some resolution. Levels (210 . . . 220) in the pattern tree represent resolution, typically equivalent to pyramid level, with the root or top node 230 matching the overall appearance of the desired object at the lowest usable resolution 210. The top node's children 240 represent the appearance of pieces of the object, where these children's children represent sub-pieces of the pieces, and so on.

In the present invention, by attempting to detect sub-patterns rather than the entire object, the detection of the object is divided into simpler tasks. Namely, combining the pattern-tree approach with neural networks creates a method of detecting relatively complex objects by using collections of simple networks. Generally, there are sub-patterns for each of several scales, so that multi-resolution techniques such as coarse-to-fine search can be used to search for objects. In addition, matches can be verified or falsified based on subsets of the entire pattern tree, potentially improving efficiency. Partially occluded objects can be recognized by matches of parts of their pattern tree, even if matches to the larger-scale parts are poor. For example, searching for camouflaged objects can be accomplished by looking for appropriate matches to the fine-scale features first.

Specifically, the present invention trains several neural networks to detect different features, incrementally integrating these features using other networks, with a final network producing the overall estimate of the probability for an object of interest (OOI). Namely, the pattern tree grows from the root to the leaves and integrates the outputs of the networks to produce an overall estimate of the probability that an object of interest is present.

A principled objective function is also used to train the individual neural networks to detect sub-patterns or features of some class of objects. The present invention learns the sub-pattern, rather than being informed as to what is the pattern, its location, in which examples of the objects it occurs, or even the probability of it occurring in an object. Each feature-detection network learns a pattern which is most useful for distinguishing this class of objects from other objects, although the pattern does not have to appear in every example of the object of interest. The objective function of the present invention differs significantly from the traditional neural network error functions, which are designed to measure how likely the network is to reproduce the training data.

FIG. 3 illustrates a method 300 for learning pattern trees. Namely, FIG. 3 illustrates a method for training and determining the structure/architecture a plurality of neural networks to detect a feature or sub-feature which is useful for distinguishing between objects of the desired class from other objects without having to specify the feature, i.e., each neural network "discovers" the feature during training. A pattern tree will typically have its root node represent the overall appearance of the object at low resolution, e.g., a pattern tree for faces might have a root node that represents small face-shaped blobs.

Referring to FIG. 3, the method begins in step 310 and proceeds to step 320 where the method trains the root of the pattern tree. The training of a neural network to detect such patterns is similar to the usual procedure for training a neural network to detect objects in an image. It may be undesirable to try to force the neural network to respond at all positions within the objects at low-resolution, and it may be difficult or at least tedious to specify exactly which pixels are contained in the objects. In one embodiment, the error function for training the root node is the uncertain-object-position objective of equation 9 as discussed below. In a second embodiment, for learning the appearance of different poses of the object, the "Feature Discovery" objective of equation 2 below can be used so that one neural network would not have to learn all poses. However, other appropriate error functions can be used to train the root node.

All networks in the present invention are used in the same way, where the network is applied to each pixel in an image or region of an image, one pixel at a time. The inputs to the network are features derived from the image at that location. These features may be chosen features, such as oriented energies in some frequency bands, or they may have been derived by another network.

In step 330, the method 300 trains the children nodes. Each of the neural networks is trained with different random starting weight vectors. The neural networks are trained in all of each region occupied by an object, or they may be trained in some region defined by the output of the network in the parent node. These trainings serve to promote the child networks in learning sub-features of the parent's feature.

In one embodiment, there is nothing to encourage the child networks to learn the sub-features. Since the goal is to have the child networks learn sub-features of the parent's features, the method simply provides the child networks with the parent network's output or the outputs of its hidden units, suitably up-sampled since the parent's pattern is at a lower resolution. This would at least provide the child networks with information about the coarser-scale feature.

In another embodiment, some region in the image would be defined by locating all pixels at which the parent network's output is above some threshold. This region is expanded slightly, since the parent node may respond only in a restricted region of some feature. This expansion permits the children to learn sub-features of the entire parent feature.

It is desirable for the network to learn to detect some feature which is maximally helpful for distinguishing objects of this class from other objects. The network will be trained on all examples of the object and on negative examples. However, it is not desirable to insist that the feature occurs in all examples of the object, but if it never occurs, the feature is very uninformative. Thus, the present invention trains the neural networks using an objective function called "Feature-Discovery" which prefers features which occur fairly frequently in the examples of the class, but does not punish the network too much for examples in which the feature does not occur.

More specifically, the probability that a pixel is in an object from the class of interest is maximized, if the network generates a detection at that pixel. Unlike the conventional case, the probability of being in an object given a detection is not determined by the training data. Instead, a distribution for it from the training data is computed and the mean value of this distribution is used as our performance criterion.

Let the output of the network at position x by y(x). Denote the symbol o (o) that an object is (is not) present at whatever pixel that are currently being considered. Denote by d (d) that the network has (has not) detected a pattern at the current pixel. The probability of being in an object from the class of interest given a detection is Pr (o.backslash.d), which can be referred to as p.sub.o.backslash.d. For a given parameter vector, set of input images, and knowledge of the locations of the objects in the image, the sets of network outputs Y.sub.Pos on the positive positions and Y.sub.Neg on the negative positions can be computer. The probability distribution for P.sub.o.backslash.d can be marginalized over the number of detections n.sub.od in positive examples of the desired object class and the number of detections n.sub.od in negative examples. Thus, the expected value of p.sub.o.backslash.d is: ##EQU1## The expression in equation 1 can be evaluated exactly since the factors in each term in the sum are well-defined, given a prior for p.sub.o.backslash.d. Thus, equation 1 is computed with respect to the network's parameters to produce the expression: ##EQU2## where N is the total number of pixels, n.sub.o is the number of pixels inside of the object. (The bar here indicates the mean and not negations as above.) The negative logarithm of equation 2 is the Feature-Discovery (FD) objective function (E.sub.FD). Typically, in training a neural network, the weights are adjusted to minimize the negative logarithm of a probability, rather than maximizing the probability directly. However, those skilled in the art will realize that given a probability, neural network training can be implemented in different manners.

The gradient of p.sub.o.backslash.d with respect to a weight w.sub.a is: ##EQU3##

However, solving equation 2 is computationally expensive. Alternatively, if n.sub.od >>1, a good approximation should be p.sub.o.backslash.d .apprxeq.n.sub.od /n.sub.d, the number of detections in objects divided by the total number of detections. By using the mean values of n.sub.od and n.sub.d and applying offsets a, b to both numerator and denominator, where a=2n.sub.0 /N and b=2, an approximation to p.sub.o.backslash.d is achieved. The negative logarithm of this approximation is used as the "Approximate Feature-Discovery" (AFD) objective function: ##EQU4## Even though equation 4 is derived from an exact expression of p.sub.o.backslash.d, that exact expression was derived using a choice of prior, so the terms 2n.sub.0 N and 2 are not the only possibilities. For the purpose of training, the gradient of equation 4 with respect to the network parameters is: ##EQU5##

Because these objective functions use the number of pixels detected in the positive regions and in total, the network is rewarded for detecting more than one pixel within an object.

Alternatively, it would be preferable if the neural network was rewarded for detecting pixels in different objects. To achieve this result, the detection of pixels is replaced with the detection of regions. For the negative pixels, those parts of the image whose size is typical of the objects being detected are divided into "blobs". In a coarse-to-fine search system, at resolutions other than the lowest, negative regions are defined by the detections of the network at the next-lower-resolution. If these regions are large, it may be useful to divide them into smaller regions.

The probability of detecting a region is just the probability of detecting at least one pixel within the region. This is one minus the probability of not detecting any of the pixels, or z.sub.i =1-.PI..sub.x.epsilon.Blob.sbsb.i (1-y(x)). Thus, the blob-wise AFD objective is ##EQU6## where n.sub.pb is the number of positive blobs in the training data and N.sub.b is the total number of blobs in the training data. The gradient of equation 6 with respect to a weight is: ##EQU7##

The initial number of children to train for a given node in the tree is approximately 10. This number can be altered by pruning out those networks which are redundant or perform poorly.

Thus, method 300 learns the pattern tree by first training the root and then training children of the root at the next-higher resolution. For each child, the method then trains children for it, and so on at successively higher resolutions, until the method has found sub-features at the highest resolution available.

In step 340, method 300 integrates feature detection into object detection. Method 300 creates or grows a pattern tree having a particular "tree-mirroring" structure as illustrated in FIG. 4. Referring to FIG. 4, the tree-mirroring structure contains "feature" (F) networks 412, 422, 424, 432, 434 and 436, which have already been trained to detect sub-patterns of the objects. The tree-mirroring structure also contains integration networks (I) 414 and 426, which have the outputs of other networks for their inputs. For each feature network with children, a single corresponding or "mirror" integration network is added which receives inputs from the children of its mirror feature network and also input from that mirror feature network. It should be noted that, at most, only one integration network is added to each level or resolution as shown in FIG. 4. For example, integration neural network 426 receives inputs from feature neural networks 422, 432 and 434.

However, if a feature network has children which themselves have children, i.e., which are not leaves of the tree, then this feature network's mirror integration network will be given input from the child feature networks' mirror integration networks, rather than from the feature networks themselves. For example, integration neural network 414 receives inputs from feature neural networks 424, 436 and integration network 426.

The integration network is trained to detect information resembling the part of the object corresponding to the feature of that part's appearance being detected by the mirror feature network. Unlike the mirror feature network, the integration network contains relevant finer-scale information about the sub-feature it detects, namely the sub-features of this sub-feature. Thus, the integration network is a more reliable detector than the mirror feature network of the same sub-feature. In the preferred embodiment, the training for both the integration network and feature network is the same.

This method of adding integration networks at successively higher resolutions is repeated up to the root node. The mirror integration network 414 of the root node is a network whose output is an estimate of the probability that an OOI is present. Thus the outputs of the feature nets are incrementally combined to produce this probability estimate.

Alternatively, since each feature network and its corresponding mirror integration network have outputs representing the same type of information, the child feature network's outputs can be directly applied as inputs to a separate integration network, rather than their mirror integration nets' outputs. In this manner, the method determines the probability that an OOI is present without having to apply the entire tree. This probability can be used to decide whether to accept this example as a positive, a negative, or to continue applying the tree. Once the feature detection is integrated into object detection, method 300 ends in step 350.

However, those skilled in the art will realize that method 300 can be modified in many ways to produce similar results. For example, some geometric information can be introduced by having the integration networks receive input from a small window in the images of their outputs. Alternatively, it might also be useful to provide a child network with an upsampled window of the outputs of its parent, so it can determine where it lies relative to its parent feature. Another alternative is to apply competitive learning in training the networks to promote different children of a node to learn different patterns.

Thus, an "Feature Discovery" objective function and its gradient have been presented which allows a neural network or other parameterized function to be trained for detecting features of a set of objects which best discriminate the objects of this class from other parts of the images. Alternatively, accurate approximations of the objective function can be used to train the neural networks to reduce the computational expense. These equations express an estimate of the probability p.sub.o.backslash.d that a pixel is in an object of the class of interest if the network generates a detection at that pixel.

Since the neural networks are trained with the FD or AFD objectives, the networks generally detect features which tend to be present in the objects of interest. One modification of the present invention is to incorporate features which tend not to be present in these objects. Thus, it is possible to train some neural networks on the complementary error function or to have a single error function which gives both kinds of features, favoring whichever kind is most useful. Furthermore, the FD or AFD objective functions can be used to train neural networks that are not assembled into a pattern tree.

A very common problem in supervised learning is the presence of errors in the training data. First, when training a network to detect objects in images, the positions of the objects in the training data may not be accurately specified or the objects may not even have definite positions. The second kind of errors are wrong classifications of examples for detection or classification problems. For example, a human may introduce errors into the training data by incorrectly selecting the positions of the desired objects or incorrectly classifying the objects, i.e., objects were incorrectly chosen as positive or negative examples.

Furthermore, extended objects may have definite boundaries, yet frequently it is not desirable to train the network to respond to all points within the objects' boundaries. Specific points within each object could be chosen as the points at which the network must respond, but frequently it will not be clear which points to choose. Thus, even though the objects' positions are well defined, the desired output of the network may not be. For objects without precisely-defined positions, it is desirable to train a neural network so that its output goes high somewhere within the object, without specifying precisely where. The present invention provides objective functions for training a network to detect objects whose positions and classifications in the training data are uncertain.

Most error functions, including the conventional cross-entropy objective function, are valid only if the positions of the objects are precisely specified. Specifically, the cross-entropy error function is expressed as:

where the network's output for a given input vector is y, and with probability y it is decided that the example is a positive, i.e., came from an object that the neural network wishes to find. The probability of producing the correct output for a given feature vector f is y.sup.d (f)(1-y(f)).sup.1-d (for brevity, the dependence of y on the network's weights will be suppressed throughout the discussion), where value d.epsilon.{0,1} corresponds to the correct output for the example. The probability of reproducing the training set is the product of this over all examples. However, if the positions of the objects in the training images are imprecise, the training data contains examples for which the desired output d is unknown.

For the situation in which the exact positions of the objects are unknown, a "Detection Likelihood" (DL) objective function is presented which measures the probability of detecting all of the positives and none of the negative objects in the training data, if a positive is considered to be detected when at least one detection occurs within a certain region containing the given coordinates. In one embodiment, the DL objective function is used to train the root of the pattern tree in step 320 of FIG. 3. The only conditions of the application of this DL objective function is that the true positions of the objects in the training data are within a known distance of the given positions.

The DL objective function maximizes the probability of detecting the positives, i.e., of producing at least one detection within each positive region, and producing no detections elsewhere. Thus, for each positive object a small region must be chosen in which a detection by the neural network will be acceptable.

This objective function treats a detection at a point as a detection of all objects which have that point in their positive region. This is beneficial since missing such points could result in missing all of the overlapping objects. Searching at coarse resolution frequently encounters overlapping objects. Thus, detecting several objects by detecting a point is beneficial for the coarse-to-fine search approach as discussed above.

The probability of the neural network producing at least one detection in a positive region is expressed as one minus the probability of producing no detection in the region, or 1-.PI..sub.x.epsilon.Positive (1-y(x)). The probability of making a correct decision, i.e., no detection, at a negative position x is 1-y(x). The probability of detecting all of the positives and no negative points is the product of 1-.PI..sub.x.epsilon.Positive (1-y(x)) over all positives times the product of 1-y(x) over all known negatives. Thus, the DL error function is: ##EQU8##

The gradient of E.sub.DL with respect to the network weights is: ##EQU9##

Equations 9 and 10 are likely to be numerically well-behaved. However, during the early stages of training it is not uncommon for the network output at all positions in a positive region to be numerically zero, i.e., zero to the machine'precision. If the network's output unit has a sigmoidal activation function, the resulting singularity is avoided by rewriting the expressions in terms of the output unit's activation a.

Using 1-y=1/(1+e.sup.a) and partial expansion of the product 1+e.sup.a, it can be shown that: ##EQU10## For each object, the sum and product can be accumulated in a loop over positions in the positive region. The singularity occurs if all y are nearly zero, i.e., if all a are negative and large in magnitude. In this case, one of the e.sup.a 's is factored out and a maximum chosen for it, thus accumulating (dropping the x's, since the indices are adequate labels): ##EQU11## If a new a.sup.Max is found, and it is still large in magnitude and negative, the current sum is multiplied by e.sup.a.spsb.OldMax.sub.-a.spsb.NewMax. At the end of the loop this positive regions's contribution to the error is: ##EQU12## During the loop over positions, a position whose a is negative but relatively small or positive may be encountered. The factor e.sup.a.spsb.OldMax.sub.-a.spsb.NewMax could be extremely small, so that equation 13 becomes inappropriate. In such case, modification of equation 11 with a partial sum and product up to the (k-1)-th term produces: ##EQU13## where it is used to switch to accumulating the product of 1-y(x.sub.i). This can be expressed in terms of the partial sum up to the (k-1)-th term as: ##EQU14## where a.sub.k.sup.Max is the maximum activation among the first k points in the object. The derivative of the error in a positive region can be expressed as: ##EQU15## if all of the a's are large and negative, and otherwise as in equation 10. Several sums and products are typically accumulated during the loop over positions in a positive region in order to evaluate equation 16.

For the sum over positives in equation 10, there is one sum and one product to accumulate. The product .PI..sub.i (1-y.sub.i) is already being accumulated for the error. Because of the properties of the sigmoidal function, the sum is equal to .SIGMA..sub.j.ltoreq.i y.sub.j .differential.a.sub.j /.differential.w.sub.a which must be accumulated for equation 16 anyway. Thus, it is easy to switch from equation 16 to equation 10 if not all of the activities are negative and large.

Therefore, a DL objective function for training neural networks to find objects with uncertain training object positions is disclosed. Although the DL objective function is applied to the training of the root node of the pattern tree in FIG. 3, it s application is not so limited. The DL objective function can be used to train neural networks that are not assembled into a pattern tree.

The present invention also contains objective functions for handling errors in the training data for the detection learning task and the multiclass discrimination learning task, using maximum-likelihood criteria. For the detection learning task, the error function is: ##EQU16## where y(x.sub.i) is the output of the network for the i-th input vector x.sub.i, d.sub.i .epsilon.{0,1} is the "Uncertain Desired Output" (UDO) for the i-th example, i.e., 0 indicates the example was considered to be a negative example of the class of interest, whereas 1 indicates it was considered to be a positive example of the class of interest, and .pi..sub.d is the probability that the example truly belongs to the class of interest given that the udo is d. .pi..sub.d can be thought of as a function with argument d from the two-element set {0,1} to the interval [0,1].OR right.R. Thus, .pi..sub.d has two values, .pi..sub.0 and .pi..sub.1.

The Uncertain Desired Output (UDO) error function (equation 17) is derived from the generalization that the goal of training is to produce the weights which are maximally likely to produce the correct outputs, rather than the specified desired outputs. For a single example, the probability of producing the correct output is the probability of this example being a positive given the specified desired output times the probability that it will be randomly decided as a positive given the network's output, plus the probability that the example is a negative example given the specified desired output times the probability that it will be randomly decided as a negative given the network's output. This is:

The probability that the correct decisions about membership in class A is made for the training data given the network's outputs on each of these examples is: ##EQU17## As usual, it is convenient to train by minimizing the negative logarithm of equation 19, which provides the UDO error function of equation 17. It should be noted that if .pi..sub.d is not zero for either value of d, the UDO error function does not have the numerical problems of the cross-entropy error function (equation 8) when the network output saturates at zero or one.

For training neural networks, the gradient of the error with respect to the network weights is extremely useful. For the UDO error function, this is: ##EQU18## Again, if neither .pi..sub.d is zero, no special treatment is necessary. If one of the two .pi..sub.d 's is zero, then the network output may saturate at the wrong value, as with the conventional cross-entropy error function.

For the multiclass discrimination, if there are errors in the classifications in the training set, the error function is: ##EQU19## where p.sub.c (x) is the same as for a softmax network, as discussed below. .pi..sub.c,d is the probability that an example truly belongs to class c if the uncertain desired class in the training data is d. .pi..sub.c,d can be thought of as a function with arguments c,d from the set {1, . . . , N.sub.c}.times.{ 1, . . . , N.sub.c } to the interval [0,1].OR right.R, where N.sub.c is the number of classes.

The "UDO-softmax" error function (equation 21) is derived from the generalization of the Bridle's softmax error which generalizes the cross-entropy error function to the case with multiple classes. However, there is a difference, since treating the two-class case with softmax would require a network with two outputs. With N.sub.C classes, there are N.sub.C outputs y.sub.c, c.epsilon.{1, . . . , N.sub.C }. The network's estimate of the probability of the example being in class c is ##EQU20## The probability of choosing the correct class for an example, given the (assumed correct) desired classification d, is

The error function is again minus the logarithm of the product over all examples of the probability in equation 23, which gives: ##EQU21##

If there are errors in the desired classes in the data set, and the probability .pi..sub.c,d of an example belonging to class c given only its desired class d is estimated, then the probability of correctly classifying an example is: ##EQU22## The probability of correctly classifying all of the training examples is: ##EQU23## Taking the negative logarithm of equation 26 gives the "UDO-softmax" error function of equation 21.

Again, the gradient of the error with respect to the network weights is extremely useful for training neural networks. For the UDO-softmax error function, this is: ##EQU24##

Note that if there are no errors in the desired classifications given in the training set, .pi..sub.c,d =.delta..sub.c,d, so that equation 26 reduces to equation 24, and equation 27 reduces to the usual softmax formula .differential.e.sub.i /.differential.y.sub.c =p.sub.c (x.sub.i)-.delta..sub.c,d.sbsb.i where .differential.e.sub.i /.differential.y.sub.c is the derivative of the error on the i-th example e.sub.i.

Therefore, a "UDO" objective function and a "UDO-softmax" objective function for handling errors in the training data for the detection learning task and the multiclass discrimination learning task are disclosed. Again, although these objective functions can be applied to the training of the root node of the pattern tree in FIG. 3, it's application is not so limited. These objective functions can be used to train neural networks that are not assembled into a pattern tree.

alternatively, it is also possible to address errors in the training data for the detection learning task and the multiclass discrimination learning task by training the network with the conventional cross-entropy (equation 8) or softmax error function (equation 22). Namely, the network is trained on the training data, complete with its errors, and then the outputs are adjusted for the error probability while using the network. The network's output continues to be interpreted as a probability, but it is the probability that the example would have been given a particular uncertain desired output if it was in the training data. Thus, the alternative embodiments correct for the expected probability of error in order to estimate the probability that the example truly comes from the class of interest.

For the detection task, the corrected probability that the example with input vector x belongs to the class of interest is:

Equation 28 is derived by estimating P(c=1.vertline.x) which is not the underlying true probability that the example is a positive given the input, but rather it is the probability with which the example should be accepted as a positive, given the knowledge of the probability that an expert would determine it as a positive. After training, the network computes the probability P(d-1.vertline.x) that an expert would determine that an example with feature vector x is a positive. P(c=1.vertline.x) can be computed from P(d=1.vertline.x) and the .pi..sub.d 's. Expressing P(c=1.vertline.x) as a sum over probabilities with different values of d:

Factor the P(c,d.backslash.x) into P(c.backslash.d)P(d.backslash.x) (this is valid because of the interpretation of P(c=1.vertline.x), as discussed above). This gives:

Replace P(c=1.vertline.d) with .pi..sub.d and P(d=0.vertline.x) with 1-P(d=1.vertline.x) to get:

Thus, if the neural network's output for the input x is y(x), then the output should be transformed to the corrected probability of equation 28 as discussed above in order to get the best estimate for P(c=1.vertline.x) given the available information.

For the multiple-class task, the corrected probability that the example with input vector x has the true class c given the network outputs is: ##EQU25##

Here, the network has N.sub.C outputs, one for each class. Using Bridle's softmax function to compute the probabilities of an example belonging to each class from the network outputs and following the above derivation, the probability of an example with input x belonging to class c can be written as: ##EQU26## where C is the random variable describing which class the instance belongs to, of which c.epsilon.{, . . . , N.sub.C } is a sample, and D is the random variable describing which class the instance would be assigned to in the desired outputs, of which is d.epsilon.{1, . . . N.sub.C } a sample. Factor the P(C=c,D=d.backslash.x) into P(C=c.backslash.D=d)P(D=d.backslash.x) to get: ##EQU27## In order to get the best estimate of P(C=c.backslash.x) given the available information, the corrected probability of equation 32 is used, where y.sub.d (x) is the output of the network for class d, after training the network on the desired outputs with errors. Thus, a method for adjusting the outputs of a neural network for the error probability while the network is trained with conventional objective functions (cross-entropy and softmax) is disclosed.

However, the method for correcting the output of a network that was conventionally-trained with errors in the desired outputs does not give the maximum-likelihood estimate of the conditional probability, and it is not equivalent to choosing the maximum-likelihood estimate for the network's weights. Namely, the conditional probability produced by the these two different methods are not the same. Generally, the UDO error functions are numerically better-behaved than the "corrected" cross-entropy or softmax error functions. The UDO error functions could also be more robust in the presence of the errors. For example, it might tend to ignore errors that are clustered in a particular part of input space.

However, both methods may produce similar results and the performance of each method may depend on the specific application. Since there is a general preference in the community for maximum-likelihood kinds of arguments, the UDO error functions are generally preferred.

Thus, objective functions have been presented for training networks to detect objects in images when the objects' positions are not accurately specified in the training data. Furthermore, other objective were derived for detection and classification problems when the training data is known to have false examples.

The present invention can be employed to exploit contextual information for improving assisted search and automatic target recognition (ATR). Problems analogous to assisted search and ATR exist in the medical imaging community. For example, radiologists will search for microcalcifications in mammograms for early detection of breast cancer. These microcalcifications are small (less than 5 millimeters) and difficult to detect, and contextual information (e.g., clustering of calcifications, location relative to anatomical structure, etc.) can prove useful for improving detection. A method and apparatus for applying the DL objective function for training neural networks in a hierarchical neural network architecture to detect microcalcifications in mammograms is disclosed.

FIG. 5 illustrates the general processing blocks of a typical CAD system 500 for microcalcification detection with a neural network detector/classifier. The system contains a pre-processing section 520, a feature extraction and rule-based/heuristic analysis section 520 and a statistical/neural network (NN) classifier 540.

First, the system receives a digital/digitized mammogram 510, where the pre-processing section 520 segments the breast area and increases the overall signal-to-noise levels in the image. At this early state, regions of interest (ROIs) are defined representing local areas of the breast which potentially contain a cluster of calcifications.

Next, the feature extraction and rule-based/heuristic analysis section 530 applies thresholds and clustering criteria to the extracted features, given prior knowledge of how calcification clusters typically appear in the breast, in order to prune false positives.

Finally, the remaining ROIs are processed by a statistical classifier or neural network, which has been trained to discriminate between positive and negative ROIs. The advantage of having a neural network as the last stage of the processing is that a complicated and highly nonlinear discrimination function can be constructed which might otherwise not be easily expressed as a rule-based algorithm.

However, some CAD systems may produce a high number of false positives which is unacceptable by radiologists. An important goal has therefore been to establish methods for reducing false positive rates without sacrificing sensitivity.

FIG. 6 illustrates a conventional hierarchical pyramid/neural network (HPNN) 600 for detecting individual microcalcifications. The input to the HPNN are features at two different levels 620 and 622 of an image pyramid (levels 2 and 3, with level 0 being full-resolution) with the outputs, p(T), representing the probability that a target is present at a given location in the image. The HPNN comprises two neural networks 610 and 612. Neural network 612 processes data from level 3 features while neural network 610 processes data from level 2. Furthermore, in this architecture, information is propagated hierarchically, with the outputs of the hidden units (not shown) of the neural network 612 serving as inputs to the neural network 610.

FIG. 7 illustrates an apparatus 700 for generating an "integrated feature pyramid" (IFP) from an input image which is provided as input to neural networks 710 and 712. The IFP contains features constructed at several scales, allowing the neural networks to take advantage of coarse-to-fine search and to operate on only a small region of the entire image.

The features in the IFP are sorted, oriented "energies" at several image scales 720-724. Namely, a Gaussian pyramid generator 705 constructs a Gaussian pyramid having several image scales 720-724 of a sample of an input signal, e.g., an input image (a mammogram, a photograph, video frame and etc.). In turn, a filter section 730 applies (4) oriented high-pass filtering to each image of the pyramid. The pixel values in these images 735 are then squared by a squaring section 740 to get the energies. This ensures that when the resolution is reduced by low-pass filtering, the resulting image features are present. Orientation-invariant features are constructed via sorter 750 by sorting the energy images by their magnitude at each pixel location. The resulting features are useful because the relative size of the minimum energy compared with the maximum energy indicates the degree to which the local image detail is oriented. Finally, another Gaussian pyramid generator 760 generates Gaussian pyramids of these feature images, with a neural network 710 integrating the features across a given level and a neural network 712 integrating the features across a different level and so on.

The neural networks in FIG. 6 and 7 are multi-layer perceptrons, having one hidden layer with four hidden units. All units in a network perform a weighted sum of their inputs, subtracting an offset or threshold from that sum to get the activation: ##EQU28##

This activation is transformed into a unit's output, y, by passing it through the sigmoid function: ##EQU29##

The networks are trained using the cross-entropy error function of equation 8. where d.epsilon.{0,1} is the desired output. To obtain the objective function for the optimization routine, the total error is computed on the training examples, adding to it a regularization term: ##EQU30## This type of regularization is commonly referred to as "weight decay", and is used to prevent the neural network from becoming "over-trained." .lambda. was adjusted to minimize the cross-validation error. Cross-validation error was computed by dividing the training data into a number of separate disjoint subsets, whose union is the entire set. The network was first trained on all of the training data, and then, starting from this set of weights, the network was retrained on the data with one of the subsets left out. The resulting network was tested on the "holdout" subset. This retraining and testing with a holdout set was repeated for each of the subsets, and the average of the errors on the subsets in the cross-validation error, an unbiased estimate of the average error on new data.

The HPNN receives as input a single pixel from the same location in each of the feature images at the resolution being searched. The HPNN also receives hierarchical contextual input (i.e. output of the hidden units of the level 3 net are inputs to the level 2 net). The output of the HPNN is an estimate of the probability that a microcalcification is present at a given position, conditioned on its input. In applying the HPNN to the task of microcalcification detection, findings indicate that certain hidden units appear to represent information about the location of ducts, implying that the HPNN utilizes context to increase microcalcification detection accuracy.

FIG. 8 illustrates another embodiment of an apparatus 800 for generating an "integrated feature pyramid" (IFP) which can be incorporated into existing microcalcificaton detection CAD system as shown in FIG. 5 for reducing false positive regions of interest (ROIs). In this embodiment, the IFP is used as inputs to a HPNN architecture that incorporates a four level hierarchy (levels 0 to 3) as opposed to the two levels used in the HPNN of FIG. 7. Namely, the input to the HPNN are features at four different levels of an image pyramid. In turn, the HPNN comprises four neural networks 810, 812, 814 and 816, where neural network 816 processes data from level 3 features with the outputs of its hidden units (not shown) serving as inputs to the neural network 814 and so on in a hierarchical manner.

In addition, the IFP is constructed differently. Before constructing the integrated feature pyramid, a background trend correction technique is applied to all the ROIs. Namely, steerable filters 830 were used to compute local orientation energy. The steering properties of these filters enable the direct computation of the orientation having maximum energy. At each pixel location, features which represent the maximum energy (energy at .theta..sub.max), the energy at the orientation perpendicular to .theta..sub.max (.theta..sub.max -90.degree.), and the energy at the diagonal (energy at .theta..sub.max -45.degree.) were constructed. In sum, the IFP generator of FIG. 8 replaces the oriented high-pass filters 730 with steerable filters 830, thereby eliminating the need for the (sorter) 750 as shown in FIG. 7. In turn, Gaussian pyramid generator 860 construct pyramids for these features which are then fed into the network hierarchy as shown in FIG. 8.

Referring to FIG. 8, each network in the HPNN hierarchy receives 3(L+1) inputs from the integrated feature pyramid and 4 hidden unit inputs from the L-1 network, with the exception of the level 3 network 816, which has no hidden unit inputs. However, the use of the IFP is not limited to the network architecture of the HPNN. In fact, the IFP can be used in conjunction with the pattern tree architecture as discussed above or other network architectures.

Since radiologists often make small errors in localizing the individual calcifications, the DL error function of equation 9 is used to train the neural networks for reducing false positives. These errors generally appear to be within .+-.2 pixels of the correct position.

The HPNN is applied to every pixel in the input, in raster scan, and a probability map is constructed from the output of the Level 0 network. This map represents the network's estimate of the probability (continuous between 0.0 and 1.0) that a microcalcification is at a given pixel location. Training and testing was done using a jackknife protocol, whereby one half of the data is used for training and the other half for testing.

For a given ROI, the probability map produced by the network is thresholded at a given value (between 0.0 and 1) to produce a binary detection map. Region growing is used to count the number of distinct regions. If the number of regions is greater than or equal to a certain cluster criterion, then the ROI is classified as a positive, else it is classified a negative.

FIG. 9 illustrates the method 900 of applying a hierarchical pyramid/neural network architecture to the problem of finding microcalcifications in mammograms. The HPNN utilizes contextual and multi-resolution information for reducing the false positive rates of an existing CAD system for microcalcification detection.

Referring to FIG. 9, method 900 begins in step 910 and proceeds to step 920 where the method constructs an integrated feature pyramid by decomposing the image by orientation and scale. As discussed above, the decomposition of the image by orientation can be accomplished by using oriented high-pass filters or steerable filters. Once the image is decomposed, the method proceeds to step 930.

In step 930, the resulting features from the decomposed image is feed into an HPNN structure where the neural network integrate the features across a given level. Furthermore, outputs of hidden units from the neural network of a lower level is feed as inputs to the neural network of the next level and so on in a hierarchical fashion. FIG. 7 and 8 illustrate two specific HPNN structures with two and four levels. However, HPNN structures with other levels are also permitted and may produce similar results.

In step 940, the HPNN is trained using the DL error function of equation 9. This error function is particularly well suited for the detection of microcalcifications because their locations in a mammogram may not be accurately specified or may not have definite positions. Those skilled in the art will realize that the training step of 940 does not have to follow step 930. In fact, the HPNN can be trained prior to receiving the IFP as inputs. Finally, the method ends in step 950.

Those skilled in the art will realize that the HPNN is not limited to the detection of microcalcifications in mammograms and can be applied to various applications such as analyzing aerial imagery. Furthermore, although the present invention is described with objects in images, those skilled in the art will realize that the present invention can be applied to events in a signal, i.e., detecting events in one-dimensional signals, or specific conditions in signals with any number of dimensions greater than zero.

There has thus been shown and described a novel method and apparatus for learning and integrating features from multiple resolutions for detecting and/or classifying objects and for addressing supervised learning where there are potential errors in the training data. Many changes, modifications, variations and other uses and applications of the subject invention will, however, become apparent to those skilled in the art after considering this specification and the accompanying drawings which disclose the embodiments thereof. All such changes, modifications, variations and other uses and applications which do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention are deemed to be covered by the invention, which is to be limited only by the claims which follow.