There are multiple scales of abstraction from which we can describe the same image, depending on whether we are focusing on fine-grained details or a more global attribute of the image. In brain mapping, learning to automatically parse images to build representations of both small-scale features (e.g., the presence of cells or blood vessels) and global properties of an image (e.g., which brain region the image comes from) is a crucial and open challenge. However, most existing datasets and benchmarks for neuroanatomy consider only a single downstream task at a time. To bridge this gap, we introduce a new dataset, annotations, and multiple downstream tasks that provide diverse ways to readout information about brain structure and architecture from the same image. Our multi-task neuroimaging benchmark (MTNeuro) is built on volumetric, micrometer-resolution X-ray microtomography images spanning a large thalamocortical section of mouse brain, encompassing multiple cortical and subcortical regions. We generated a number of different prediction challenges and evaluated several supervised and self-supervised models for brain-region prediction and pixel-level semantic segmentation of microstructures. Our experiments not only highlight the rich heterogeneity of this dataset, but also provide insights into how self-supervised approaches can be used to learn representations that capture multiple attributes of a single image and perform well on a variety of downstream tasks. Datasets, code, and pre-trained baseline models are provided at: https://mtneuro.github.io/ .

In unstructured environments, robots run the risk of unexpected collisions. How well they react to these events is determined by how transparent they are to collisions. Transparency is affected by structural properties as well as sensing and control architectures. In this paper, we propose the collision reflex metric as a way to formally quantify transparency. It is defined as the total impulse transferred in collision, which determines the collision mitigation capabilities of a closed-loop robotic system taking into account structure, sensing, and control. We analyze the effect of motor scaling, stiffness, and configuration on the collision reflex of a system using an analytical model. Physical experiments using the move-until-touch behavior are conducted to compare the collision reflex of direct-drive and quasi-direct-drive actuators and robotic hands (Schunk WSG-50 and Dexterous DDHand.) For transparent systems, we see a counter-intuitive trend: the impulse may be lower at higher pre-impact velocities.

对于场景重建和新型视图综合的数量表示形式的普及最近，人们的普及使重点放在以高视觉质量和实时为实时的体积内容动画上。尽管基于学习功能的隐性变形方法可以产生令人印象深刻的结果，但它们是艺术家和内容创建者的“黑匣子”，但它们需要大量的培训数据才能有意义地概括，并且在培训数据之外不会产生现实的外推。在这项工作中，我们通过引入实时的音量变形方法来解决这些问题，该方法是实时的，易于使用现成的软件编辑，并且可以令人信服地推断出来。为了证明我们方法的多功能性，我们将其应用于两种情况：基于物理的对象变形和触发性，其中使用Blendshapes控制着头像。我们还进行了彻底的实验，表明我们的方法与两种体积方法相比，结合了基于网格变形的隐式变形和方法。

地标通常在面部分析中起关键作用，但是仅凭稀疏地标就不能代表身份或表达的许多方面。因此，为了更准确地重建面，地标通常与其他信号（如深度图像或技术）相结合，例如可区分渲染。我们可以通过使用更多地标使事情变得简单吗？在答案中，我们提出了第一种准确地预测10倍地标的方法，覆盖整个头部，包括眼睛和牙齿。这是使用合成培训数据来完成的，该数据保证了完美的地标注释。通过将可变形的模型拟合到这些密集的地标，我们可以在野外实现单眼3D面重建的最新结果。我们表明，密集的地标是通过在单眼和多视图方案中展示准确和表现力的面部绩效捕获来整合跨帧面部形状信息的理想信号。这种方法也非常有效：我们可以预测密集的地标，并在单个CPU线程上以超过150fps的速度适合我们的3D面模型。请参阅我们的网站：https：//microsoft.github.io/denselandmarks/。

Extracting complex structures from grid-based data is a common key step in automated medical image analysis. The conventional solution to recovering tree-structured geometries typically involves computing the minimal cost path through intermediate representations derived from segmentation masks. However, this methodology has significant limitations in the context of projective imaging of tree-structured 3D anatomical data such as coronary arteries, since there are often overlapping branches in the 2D projection. In this work, we propose a novel approach to predicting tree connectivity structure which reformulates the task as an optimization problem over individual steps of a recursive process. We design and train a two-stage model which leverages the UNet and Transformer architectures and introduces an image-based prompting technique. Our proposed method achieves compelling results on a pair of synthetic datasets, and outperforms a shortest-path baseline.

Cohn and Umans proposed a framework for developing fast matrix multiplication algorithms based on the embedding computation in certain groups algebras. In subsequent work with Kleinberg and Szegedy, they connected this to the search for combinatorial objects called strong uniquely solvable puzzles (strong USPs). We begin a systematic computer-aided search for these objects. We develop and implement constraint-based algorithms build on reductions to $\mathrm{SAT}$ and $\mathrm{IP}$ to verify that puzzles are strong USPs, and to search for large strong USPs. We produce tight bounds on the maximum size of a strong USP for width $k \le 5$, construct puzzles of small width that are larger than previous work, and improve the upper bounds on strong USP size for $k \le 12$. Although our work only deals with puzzles of small-constant width, the strong USPs we find imply matrix multiplication algorithms that run in $O(n^\omega)$ time with exponent $\omega \le 2.66$. While our algorithms do not beat the fastest algorithms, our work provides evidence and, perhaps, a path to finding families of strong USPs that imply matrix multiplication algorithms that are more efficient than those currently known.

Agile robotics presents a difficult challenge with robots moving at high speeds requiring precise and low-latency sensing and control. Creating agile motion that accomplishes the task at hand while being safe to execute is a key requirement for agile robots to gain human trust. This requires designing new approaches that are flexible and maintain knowledge over world constraints. In this paper, we consider the problem of building a flexible and adaptive controller for a challenging agile mobile manipulation task of hitting ground strokes on a wheelchair tennis robot. We propose and evaluate an extension to work done on learning striking behaviors using a probabilistic movement primitive (ProMP) framework by (1) demonstrating the safe execution of learned primitives on an agile mobile manipulator setup, and (2) proposing an online primitive refinement procedure that utilizes evaluative feedback from humans on the executed trajectories.

Curating datasets for object segmentation is a difficult task. With the advent of large-scale pre-trained generative models, conditional image generation has been given a significant boost in result quality and ease of use. In this paper, we present a novel method that enables the generation of general foreground-background segmentation models from simple textual descriptions, without requiring segmentation labels. We leverage and explore pre-trained latent diffusion models, to automatically generate weak segmentation masks for concepts and objects. The masks are then used to fine-tune the diffusion model on an inpainting task, which enables fine-grained removal of the object, while at the same time providing a synthetic foreground and background dataset. We demonstrate that using this method beats previous methods in both discriminative and generative performance and closes the gap with fully supervised training while requiring no pixel-wise object labels. We show results on the task of segmenting four different objects (humans, dogs, cars, birds).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become commonplace to solve routine everyday tasks. Because of the exponential growth in medical imaging data volume and complexity, the workload on radiologists is steadily increasing. We project that the gap between the number of imaging exams and the number of expert radiologist readers required to cover this increase will continue to expand, consequently introducing a demand for AI-based tools that improve the efficiency with which radiologists can comfortably interpret these exams. AI has been shown to improve efficiency in medical-image generation, processing, and interpretation, and a variety of such AI models have been developed across research labs worldwide. However, very few of these, if any, find their way into routine clinical use, a discrepancy that reflects the divide between AI research and successful AI translation. To address the barrier to clinical deployment, we have formed MONAI Consortium, an open-source community which is building standards for AI deployment in healthcare institutions, and developing tools and infrastructure to facilitate their implementation. This report represents several years of weekly discussions and hands-on problem solving experience by groups of industry experts and clinicians in the MONAI Consortium. We identify barriers between AI-model development in research labs and subsequent clinical deployment and propose solutions. Our report provides guidance on processes which take an imaging AI model from development to clinical implementation in a healthcare institution. We discuss various AI integration points in a clinical Radiology workflow. We also present a taxonomy of Radiology AI use-cases. Through this report, we intend to educate the stakeholders in healthcare and AI (AI researchers, radiologists, imaging informaticists, and regulators) about cross-disciplinary challenges and possible solutions.

Automated cellular instance segmentation is a process utilized for accelerating biological research for the past two decades, and recent advancements have produced higher quality results with less effort from the biologist. Most current endeavors focus on completely cutting the researcher out of the picture by generating highly generalized models. However, these models invariably fail when faced with novel data, distributed differently than the ones used for training. Rather than approaching the problem with methods that presume the availability of large amounts of target data and computing power for retraining, in this work we address the even greater challenge of designing an approach that requires minimal amounts of new annotated data as well as training time. We do so by designing specialized contrastive losses that leverage the few annotated samples very efficiently. A large set of results show that 3 to 5 annotations lead to models with accuracy that: 1) significantly mitigate the covariate shift effects; 2) matches or surpasses other adaptation methods; 3) even approaches methods that have been fully retrained on the target distribution. The adaptation training is only a few minutes, paving a path towards a balance between model performance, computing requirements and expert-level annotation needs.