Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) combined with deep learning demonstrates considerable potential for liver disease diagnosis. However, acquiring large-scale clinical datasets is challenging due to patient privacy constraints and sample collection complexity, leading to data scarcity that limits deep learning performance. Most existing methods rely heavily on data-driven approaches and fail to effectively utilize prior biomolecular knowledge, making them prone to overfitting. To address these limitations, we present a prior knowledge-guided adaptive multi-scale deep learning model that incorporates literature-validated biomolecular peak positions into feature learning. The model employs a dual-path architecture: an expert-guided path extracts structured features using adaptive multi-scale Gaussian convolutions optimized for distinct biomolecular markers, while a global context path captures comprehensive spectral information. An adaptive fusion mechanism integrates these paths to achieve synergy between prior knowledge and data-driven learning. In a five-class liver disease classification task with 215 subjects, our method achieved 93.66% accuracy, a 5.37% improvement over the baseline convolutional neural network (Baseline CNN, 88.29%). Data constraint experiments demonstrated superior robustness; when training data was reduced to 20%, our approach maintained 86.01% accuracy with a 10.73 percentage point margin over the baseline. Furthermore, independent external validation on a cohort of 35 subjects yielded an overall accuracy of 82.74%, significantly outperforming the Baseline CNN’s 68.23% and reducing the generalization gap from 20.15% to 10.72%, validating the model’s robustness in cross-center clinical scenarios. This work provides an effective integration of domain knowledge with artificial intelligence for Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy-based medical diagnosis.

The widespread deployment of low-altitude drones in Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as smart transportation and urban security, demands efficient, real-time visual perception on resource-constrained edge devices. A critical challenge in this domain is the precise detection and localization of small objects against complex backgrounds. Low-altitude UAV imagery is particularly challenging due to blurred small-target edges, weak anti-interference for medium and large targets, and fragmented multi-scale features. Existing convolutional and general-purpose Transformer-based detectors exhibit significant limitations in localization accuracy and robustness under these conditions. To address these issues, we proposeE2-Former, a novel object detection model based on the Detection Transformer (DETR) framework, designed for real-time performance on computational-edge devices. Our model integrates three core components: an Edge-Enhanced Backbone that augments sensitivity to contours while preserving deep semantics; a Polarized Dynamic Multi-Feature Fusion (PDMF) Transformer that leverages dual-path polarized attention and frequency-domain modulation to enhance local-global feature modeling and suppress background noise; and an Edge-aware Path Aggregation Network (E-PAN) that uses bidirectional gating and multi-level context interaction to resolve feature fragmentation and promote fine-grained, cross-scale integration. On three challenging low-altitude datasets—VisDrone2019, UAVDT, and CODrone—E2- Former achieves leadingAP50scores of 48.9%, 41.2%, and 33.0%, respectively, outperforming existing mainstream methods in both detection accuracy and robustness. Practical deployment and scene detection experiments further validate its impressive performance in real-world scenarios, establishing a new paradigm for building efficient and reliable low-altitude drone perception systems.

In this paper, a novel outlier detection method is proposed for industrial data analysis based on the fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm. An adaptive switching randomly perturbed particle swarm optimization algorithm (ASRPPSO) is put forward to optimize the initial cluster centroids of the FCM algorithm. The superiority of the proposed ASRPPSO is demonstrated over five existing PSO algorithms on a series of benchmark functions. To illustrate its application potential, the proposed ASRPPSO-based FCM algorithm is exploited in the outlier detection problem for analyzing the real-world industrial data collected from a wire arc additive manufacturing pilot line in Sweden. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed ASRPPSO-based FCM algorithm outperforms the standard FCM algorithm in detecting outliers of real-world industrial data.Note to Practitioners—Electric arc (which is governed by the current and arc voltage) plays a significant role in monitoring the operating status of the wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process. The nominal periodic current and voltage may occasionally change abruptly due to anomalies (such as arc instability, unstable metal transfer, geometrical deviations, and surface contaminations), which would affect the quality of the fabricated component. This paper focuses on detecting possible anomalies by analyzing the current and voltage during the WAAM process. A novel clustering-based outlier detection method is proposed for anomaly detection where abnormal and normal instances are categorized into two separate clusters. A new particle swarm optimization algorithm is put forward to optimize the initial cluster centroid so as to improve the detection accuracy. The proposed outlier detection method is applied to real-world data collected from a WAAM pilot line for detecting abnormal instances. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed outlier detection method. The proposed outlier detection method can be applied to other industrial applications including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and medical engineering. In the future, we aim to develop an online outlier detection system based on the proposed method for real-time for anomaly detection and defect prediction.

In this article, a novel dynamic multiobjective optimization algorithm (DMOA) is proposed based on a designed hierarchical response system (HRS). Named HRS-DMOA, the proposed algorithm mainly aims at integrating merits from the mainstream ideas of dynamic behavior handling (i.e., the diversity-, memory-, and prediction-based methods) in order to make flexible responses to environmental changes. In particular, by two predefined thresholds, the environmental changes are quantified as three levels. In case of a slight environmental change, the previous Pareto set-based refinement strategy is recommended, while the diversity-based reinitialization method is applied in case of a dramatic environmental change. For changes occurring at a medium level, the transfer-learning-based response is adopted to make full use of the historical searching experiences. The proposed HRS-DMOA is comprehensively evaluated on a series of benchmark functions, and the results show an improved comprehensive performance as compared with four popular baseline DMOAs in terms of both convergence and diversity, which also outperforms other two state-of-the-art DMOAs in ten out of 14 testing cases, exhibiting the competitiveness and superiority of the algorithm. Finally, extensive ablation studies are carried out, and from the results, it is found that as compared with randomly selecting the response methods, the proposed HRS enables more reasonable and efficient responses in most cases. In addition, the generalization ability of the proposed HRS as a flexible plug-and-play module to handle dynamic behaviors is proven as well.

In this article, a novel dynamic multiobjective optimization algorithm (DMOA) with a cascaded fuzzy system (CFS) is developed, which aims to promote objective knowledge transfer from an innovative perspective of comprehensive information characterization. This development seeks to overcome the bottleneck of negative transfer in evolutionary transfer optimization (ETO)-based algorithms. Specifically, previous Pareto solutions, center- and knee-points of multisubpopulation are adaptively selected to establish the source domain, which are then assigned soft labels through the designed CFS, based on a thorough evaluation of both convergence and diversity. A target domain is constructed by centroid feed-forward of multisubpopulation, enabling further estimations on learning samples with the assistance of the kernel mean matching (KMM) method. By doing so, the property of nonindependently identically distributed data is considered to enhance efficient knowledge transfer. Extensive evaluation results demonstrate the reliability and superiority of the proposed CFS-DMOA in solving dynamic multiobjective optimization problems, showing significant competitiveness in terms of mitigating negative transfer as compared to other state-of-the-art ETO-based DMOAs. Moreover, the effectiveness of the soft labels provided by CFS in breaking the “either/or” limitation of hard labels is validated, facilitating a more flexible and comprehensive characterization of historical information, thereby promoting objective and effective knowledge transfer.

Multimedia images have become an important way for the sharing of digital information. However, advanced editing tools provide easy methods for malicious content modification, resulting in less viable information. Therefore, there is an urgent need to design an algorithm for image tampering detection and localization, which is capable of locating the authenticity region of the received image, thus delivering the accurate information and assisting in correct decision making in industries and other fields. In this article, a novel dual-pathway multiscale network (DPMSN) is proposed for the image forgery detection, which mainly focuses on extracting the edge information. In particular, a dual-pathway structure is deployed to align visual features in red, green and blue (RGB) space and edge information in LAB space, where a coarse prediction mask is generated to promote accurate localization of the forged regions. By applying the variation convolution operators, comprehensive attention can be paid to various forged regions in multiple sizes. Moreover, in the multiscale fusion module, features at different stages and other low-level information are sufficiently fused to realize a robust presentation of the forged regions. Experimental results show the effectiveness of DPMSN as compared with other state-of-the-art image forgery detection models and the great robustness when facing image attacks, which means DPMSN is a trustworthy forgery detection approach in the industrial field.

In this article, a novel multi-strategy adaptive selection-based dynamic multiobjective optimization algorithm (MSAS-DMOA) is proposed, which adopts the non-inductive transfer learning (TL) paradigm to solve dynamic multiobjective optimization problems (DMOPs). In particular, based on a scoring system that evaluates environmental changes, the source domain is adaptively constructed with several optional groups to enrich the knowledge. Along with a group of guide solutions, the importance of historical experiences is estimated via the kernel mean matching (KMM) method, which avoids designing strategies to label individuals. The proposed MSAS-DMOA is comprehensively evaluated on 14 DMOPs, and the results show an overwhelming performance improvement in terms of both convergence and diversity as compared with other four popular DMOAs. In addition, ablation studies are also conducted to validate the superiority of the applied strategies in MSAS-DMOA, which can effectively alleviate the negative transfer phenomenon. Without the conventional labeling procedure, the proposed method also yields satisfactory results, which can provide valuable reference for designing other evolutionary transfer optimization (ETO) algorithms.

In this article, a dynamic-neighborhood-based switching PSO (DNSPSO) algorithm is proposed, where a new velocity updating mechanism is designed to adjust the personal best position and the global best position according to a distance-based dynamic neighborhood to make full use of the population evolution information among the entire swarm. In addition, a novel switching learning strategy is introduced to adaptively select the acceleration coefficients and update the velocity model according to the searching state at each iteration, thereby contributing to a thorough search of the problem space. Furthermore, the differential evolution algorithm is successfully hybridized with the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to alleviate premature convergence. A series of commonly used benchmark functions (including unimodal, multimodal, and rotated multimodal cases) is utilized to comprehensively evaluate the performance of the DNSPSO algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that the developed DNSPSO algorithm outperforms a number of existing PSO algorithms in terms of the solution accuracy and convergence performance, especially for complicated multimodal optimization problems.

High-dimensional and sparse (HiDS) matrices are frequently found in various industrial applications. A latent factor analysis (LFA) model is commonly adopted to extract useful knowledge from an HiDS matrix, whose parameter training mostly relies on a stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm. However, an SGD-based LFA model's learning rate is hard to tune in real applications, making it vital to implement its self-adaptation. To address this critical issue, this study firstly investigates the evolution process of a particle swarm optimization algorithm with care, and then proposes to incorporate more dynamic information into it for avoiding accuracy loss caused by premature convergence without extra computation burden, thereby innovatively achieving a novel position-transitional particle swarm optimization (P2SO) algorithm. It is subsequently adopted to implement a P2SO-based LFA (PLFA) model that builds a learning rate swarm applied to the same group of LFs. Thus, a PLFA model implements highly efficient learning rate adaptation as well as represents an HiDS matrix precisely. Experimental results on four HiDS matrices emerging from real applications demonstrate that compared with an SGD-based LFA model, a PLFA model no longer suffers from a tedious and expensive tuning process of its learning rate, and it can achieve even higher prediction accuracy for missing data of an HiDS matrix. On the other hand, compared with state-of-the-art adaptive LFA models, a PLFA model's prediction accuracy and computational efficiency are highly competitive. Hence, it has high potential in addressing real industrial issues.

Recently, coronary heart disease has attracted more and more attention, where segmentation and analysis for vascular lumen contour are helpful for treatment. And intravascular optical coherence tomography (IVOCT) images are used to display lumen shapes in clinic. Thus, an automatic segmentation method for IVOCT lumen contour is necessary to reduce the doctors' workload while ensuring diagnostic accuracy. In this paper, we proposed a deep residual segmentation network of multi-scale feature fusion based on attention mechanism (RSM-Network, Residual Squeezed Multi-Scale Network) to segment the lumen contour in IVOCT images. Firstly, three different data augmentation methods including mirror level turnover, rotation and vertical flip are considered to expand the training set. Then in the proposed RSM-Network, U-Net is contained as the main body, considering its characteristic of accepting input images with any sizes. Meanwhile, the combination of residual network and attention mechanism is applied to improve the ability of global feature extraction and solve the vanishing gradient problem. Moreover, the pyramid feature extraction structure is introduced to enhance the learning ability for multi-scale features. Finally, in order to increase the matching degree between the actual output and expected output, the cross entropy loss function is also used. A series of metrics are presented to evaluate the performance of our proposed network and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed RSM-Network can learn the contour details better, contributing to strong robustness and accuracy for IVOCT lumen contour segmentation.

In this paper, a novel particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is put forward where a sigmoid-function-based weighting strategy is developed to adaptively adjust the acceleration coefficients. The newly proposed adaptive weighting strategy takes into account both the distances from the particle to the global best position and from the particle to its personal best position, thereby having the distinguishing feature of enhancing the convergence rate. Inspired by the activation function of neural networks, the new strategy is employed to update the acceleration coefficients by using the sigmoid function. The search capability of the developed adaptive weighting PSO (AWPSO) algorithm is comprehensively evaluated via eight well-known benchmark functions including both the unimodal and multimodal cases. The experimental results demonstrate that the designed AWPSO algorithm substantially improves the convergence rate of the particle swarm optimizer and also outperforms some currently popular PSO algorithms.

Aortic stent has been widely used in restoring vascular stenosis and assisting patients with cardiovascular disease. The effective visualization of aortic stent is considered to be critical to ensure the effectiveness and functions of the aortic stent in clinical practice. Volume rendering with ray casting has been used as an effective approach to enable the effective visualization of aortic stent. The volume rendering relies on the transfer function that converts the medical images into optical attributes including color and transparency. This article proposes a new transfer function, namely, the multi-dimensional transfer function, to provide additional transparency value of a voxel. The proposed approach using the additional transparency value effectively assists the distinguishing of tissues that have the same CT value. The transparency values are simultaneously determined by gray threshold and gray change threshold, which can recognize the unnecessary structures such as bones transparent. A series of experimental results demonstrate that the situation of aorta stent of a patient can be directly observed, and the angle of view can be switched arbitrarily. The proposed method provides a new way for the operation of a virtual endoscopy to reach the place of blood vessels that a traditional endoscopy fails to reach.

In this paper, a novel particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed in order to improve the accuracy of traditional clustering approaches with applications in analyzing real-time patient attendance data from an accident & emergency (A&E) department in a local U.K. hospital. In the proposed randomly occurring distributedly delayed PSO (RODDPSO) algorithm, the evolutionary state is determined by evaluating the evolutionary factor in each iteration, based on whether the velocity updating model switches from one mode to another. With the purpose of reducing the possibility of getting trapped in the local optima and also expanding the search space, randomly occurring time-delays that reflect the history of previous personal best and global best particles are introduced in the velocity updating model in a distributed manner. Eight well-known benchmark functions are employed to evaluate the proposed RODDPSO algorithm which is shown via extensive comparisons to outperform some currently popular PSO algorithms. To further illustrate the application potential, the RODDPSO algorithm is successfully exploited in the patient clustering problem for data analysis with respect to a local A&E department in West London. Experiment results demonstrate that the RODDPSO-based clustering method is superior over two other well-known clustering algorithms.

Gold immunochromatographic strip assay provides a rapid, simple, single-copy and on-site way to detect the presence or absence of the target analyte. This paper aims to develop a method for accurately segmenting the test line and control line of the gold immunochromatographic strip (GICS) image for quantitatively determining the trace concentrations in the specimen, which can lead to more functional information than the traditional qualitative or semi-quantitative strip assay. The canny operator as well as the mathematical morphology method is used to detect and extract the GICS reading-window. Then, the test line and control line of the GICS reading-window are segmented by the cellular neural network (CNN) algorithm, where the template parameters of the CNN are designed by the switching particle swarm optimization (SPSO) algorithm for improving the performance of the CNN. It is shown that the SPSO-based CNN offers a robust method for accurately segmenting the test and control lines, and therefore serves as a novel image methodology for the interpretation of GICS. Furthermore, quantitative comparison is carried out among four algorithms in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ratio. It is concluded that the proposed CNN algorithm gives higher accuracy and the CNN is capable of parallelism and analog very-large-scale integration implementation within a remarkably efficient time.

In this paper, a hybrid extended Kalman filter (EKF) and switching particle swarm optimization (SPSO) algorithm is proposed for jointly estimating both the parameters and states of the lateral flow immunoassay model through available short time-series measurement. Our proposed method generalizes the well-known EKF algorithm by imposing physical constraints on the system states. Note that the state constraints are encountered very often in practice that give rise to considerable difficulties in system analysis and design. The main purpose of this paper is to handle the dynamic modeling problem with state constraints by combining the extended Kalman filtering and constrained optimization algorithms via the maximization probability method. More specifically, a recently developed SPSO algorithm is used to cope with the constrained optimization problem by converting it into an unconstrained optimization one through adding a penalty term to the objective function. The proposed algorithm is then employed to simultaneously identify the parameters and states of a lateral flow immunoassay model. It is shown that the proposed algorithm gives much improved performance over the traditional EKF method.