Faculty Bibliography

This paper addresses the detection of periodic transients in vibration signals so as to detect faults in rotating machines. For this purpose, we present a method to estimate periodic-group-sparse signals in noise. The method is based on the formulation of a convex optimization problem. A fast iterative algorithm is given for its solution. A simulated signal is formulated to verify the performance of the proposed approach for periodic feature extraction. The detection performance of comparative methods is compared with that of the proposed approach via RMSE values and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Finally, the proposed approach is applied to single fault diagnosis of a locomotive bearing and compound faults diagnosis of motor bearings. The processed results show that the proposed approach can effectively detect and extract the useful features of bearing outer race and inner race defect.

This paper describes an exponential transient excision algorithm (ETEA). In biomedical time series analysis, e.g., in vivo neural recording and electrocorticography (ECoG), some measurement artifacts take the form of piecewise exponential transients. The proposed method is formulated as an unconstrained convex optimization problem, regularized by smoothed l(1)-norm penalty function, which can be solved by majorization-minimization (MM) method. With a slight modification of the regularizer, ETEA can also suppress more irregular piecewise smooth artifacts, especially, ocular artifacts (OA) in electro-encephalography (EEG) data. Examples of synthetic signal, EEG data, and ECoG data are presented to illustrate the proposed algorithms. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper develops a convex approach for sparse one-dimensional deconvolution that improves upon L1-norm regularization, the standard convex approach. We propose a sparsity-inducing non-separable non-convex bivariate penalty function for this purpose. It is designed to enable the convex formulation of ill-conditioned linear inverse problems with quadratic data fidelity terms. The new penalty overcomes limitations of separable regularization. We show how the penalty parameters should be set to ensure that the objective function is convex, and provide an explicit condition to verify the optimality of a prospective solution. We present an algorithm (an instance of forward-backward splitting) for sparse deconvolution using the new penalty.

This paper addresses the mitigation of wind turbine clutter (WTC) in weather radar data in order to increase the performance of existing weather radar systems and to improve weather analyses and forecasts. We propose a novel approach for this problem based on signal separation algorithms. We model the weather signal as group sparse in the time-frequency domain; in parallel, we model the WTC signal as having a sparse time derivative. In order to separate WTC and the desired weather returns, we formulate the signal separation problem as an optimization problem. The objective function to be minimized combines total variation regularization and time-frequency group sparsity. We also propose a three-window short-time Fourier transform for the time-frequency representation of the weather signal. To show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm on weather radar systems, the method is applied to simulated and real data from the next-generation weather radar network. Significant improvements are observed in reflectivity, spectral width, and angular velocity estimates.

This letter proposes to estimate low-rank matrices by formulating a convex optimization problem with nonconvex regularization. We employ parameterized nonconvex penalty functions to estimate the nonzero singular values more accurately than the nuclear norm. A closed-form solution for the global optimum of the proposed objective function (sum of data fidelity and the nonconvex regularizer) is also derived. The solution reduces to singular value thresholding method as a special case. The proposed method is demonstrated for image denoising.

This paper addresses the problem of extracting periodic oscillatory features in vibration signals for detecting faults in rotating machinery. To extract the feature, we propose an approach in the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) domain where the periodic oscillatory feature manifests itself as a relatively sparse grid. To estimate the sparse grid, we formulate an optimization problem using customized binary weights in the regularizer, where the weights are formulated to promote periodicity. In order to solve the proposed optimization problem, we develop an algorithm called augmented Lagrangian majorization-minimization algorithm, which combines the split augmented Lagrangian shrinkage algorithm (SALSA) with majorization-minimization (MM), and is guaranteed to converge for both convex and non-convex formulation. As examples, the proposed approach is applied to simulated data, and used as a tool for diagnosing faults in bearings and gearboxes for real data, and compared to some state-of-the-art methods. The results show that the proposed approach can effectively detect and extract the periodical oscillatory features. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

OBJECTIVE: The King-Devick (KD) test, which is based on rapid number naming speed, is a performance measure that adds vision and eye movement assessments to sideline concussion testing. We performed a laboratory-based study to characterize ocular motor behavior during the KD test in a patient cohort with chronic concussion to identify features associated with prolonged KD reading times. METHODS: Twenty-five patients with a concussion history (mean age: 31) were compared to control participants with no concussion history (n = 42, mean age: 32). Participants performed a computerized KD test under infrared-based video-oculography. RESULTS: Average intersaccadic intervals for task-specific saccades were significantly longer among concussed patients compared to controls (324.4 +/- 85.6 msec vs. 286.1 +/- 49.7 msec, P = 0.027). Digitized KD reading times were prolonged in concussed participants versus controls (53.43 +/- 14.04 sec vs. 43.80 +/- 8.55 sec, P = 0.004) and were highly correlated with intersaccadic intervals. Concussion was also associated with a greater number of saccades during number reading and larger average deviations of saccade endpoint distances from the centers of the to-be-read numbers (1.22 +/- 0.29 degrees vs. 0.98 +/- 0.27 degrees , P = 0.002). There were no differences in saccade peak velocity, duration, or amplitude. INTERPRETATION: Prolonged intersaccadic intervals, greater numbers of saccades, and larger deviations of saccade endpoints underlie prolonged KD reading times in chronic concussion. The KD test relies upon a diffuse neurocognitive network that mediates the fine control of efferent visual function. One sequela of chronic concussion may be disruption of this system, which may produce deficits in spatial target selection and planning of eye movements.

OBJECTIVE: Concussion is a major public health problem and considerable efforts are focused on sideline-based diagnostic testing to guide return-to-play decision-making and clinical care. The King-Devick (K-D) test, a sensitive sideline performance measure for concussion detection, reveals slowed reading times in acutely concussed subjects, as compared to healthy controls; however, the normal behavior of eye movements during the task and deficits underlying the slowing have not been defined. METHODS: Twelve healthy control subjects underwent quantitative eye tracking during digitized K-D testing. RESULTS: The total K-D reading time was 51.24 (+/-9.7) seconds. A total of 145 saccades (+/-15) per subject were generated, with average peak velocity 299.5 degrees /s and average amplitude 8.2 degrees . The average inter-saccadic interval was 248.4ms. Task-specific horizontal and oblique saccades per subject numbered, respectively, 102 (+/-10) and 17 (+/-4). Subjects with the fewest saccades tended to blink more, resulting in a larger amount of missing data; whereas, subjects with the most saccades tended to make extra saccades during line transitions. CONCLUSIONS: Establishment of normal and objective ocular motor behavior during the K-D test is a critical first step towards defining the range of deficits underlying abnormal testing in concussion. Further, it sets the groundwork for exploration of K-D correlations with cognitive dysfunction and saccadic paradigms that may reflect specific neuroanatomic deficits in the concussed brain.