Persistence modules (defined as a sequence of vector spaces and linear maps between them) are a key tool in topological data analysis. They are easy to interpret and fast to compute. However, when considering persistence maps (i.e. maps between persistence modules), these properties are lost. We propose a new invariant for persistence maps consisting of a partial matching such that: it is easy to interpret, it is more discriminative than the image of the persistence map, and can be calculated with cubical complexity.

Simplicial map neural networks (SMNNs) are topology-based neural networks with interesting properties such as universal approximation ability and robustness to adversarial examples under appropriate conditions. However, SMNNs present some bottlenecks for their possible application in high-dimensional datasets. First, SMNNs have precomputed fixed weight and no SMNN training process has been defined so far, so they lack generalization ability. Second, SMNNs require the construction of a convex polytope surrounding the input dataset. In this paper, we overcome these issues by proposing an SMNN training procedure based on a support subset of the given dataset and replacing the construction of the convex polytope by a method based on projections to a hypersphere. In addition, the explainability capacity of SMNNs and effective implementation are also newly introduced in this paper.

We study how to obtain partial matchings using the block function Mf, induced by a morphism f between persistence modules. Mf is defined algebraically and is linear with respect to direct sums of morphisms. We study some interesting properties of Mf, and provide a way of obtaining Mf using matrix operations.

A structure preserving irregular image pyramid can be computed by applying basic graph operations (contraction and removal of edges) on the 4 adjacent neighbourhood graph of an image. In this paper, we derive an objective function that classifies the edges as contractible or removable for building an irregular graph pyramid. The objective function is based on the cost of the edges in the contraction kernel (sub-graph selected for contraction) together with the size of the contraction kernel. Based on the objective function, we also provide an algorithm that decomposes a 2D image into monotonically connected regions of the image surface, called slope regions. We proved that the proposed algorithm results in a graph-based irregular image pyramid that preserves the structure and the topology of the critical points (the local maxima, the local minima, and the saddles). Later we introduce the concept of the dictionary for the connected components of the contraction kernel, consisting of sub-graphs that can be combined together to form a set of contraction kernels. A favorable contraction kernel can be selected that best satisfies the objective function. Lastly, we show the experimental verification for the claims related to the objective function and the cost of the contraction kernel. The outcome of this paper can be envisioned as a step towards learning the contraction kernel for the construction of an irregular image pyramid

Abstract One of the main drawbacks of the practical use of neural networks is the long time required in the training process. Such a training process consists of an iterative change of parameters trying to minimize a loss function. These changes are driven by a dataset, which can be seen as a set of labeled points in an n-dimensional space. In this paper, we explore the concept of a representative dataset which is a dataset smaller than the original one, satisfying a nearness condition independent of isometric transformations. Representativeness is measured using persistence diagrams (a computational topology tool) due to its computational efficiency. We theoretically prove that the accuracy of a perceptron evaluated on the original dataset coincides with the accuracy of the neural network evaluated on the representative dataset when the neural network architecture is a perceptron, the loss function is the mean squared error, and certain conditions on the representativeness of the dataset are imposed. These theoretical results accompanied by experimentation open a door to reducing the size of the dataset to gain time in the training process of any neural network.

Gait recognition is nowadays an important biometric technique for video surveillance tasks, due to the advantage of using it at distance. However, when the upper body movements are unrelated to the natural dynamic of the gait, caused for example by carrying a bag or wearing a coat, the reported results show low accuracy. With the goal of solving this problem, we apply persistent homology to extract topological features from the lowest fourth part of the body silhouettes. To obtain the features, we modify our previous algorithm for gait recognition, to improve its efficacy and robustness to variations in the amount of simplices of the gait complex. We evaluate our approach using the CASIA-B dataset, obtaining a considerable accuracy improvement of 93.8%, achieving at the same time invariance to upper body movements unrelated with the dynamic of the gait.