Computer Sciences Commons^™

Using Structural Similarity And Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks For Anatomical Embedding Of Cortical Folding Patterns, Minheng Chen, Chao Cao, Tong Chen, Yan Zhuang, Jing Zhang, Yanjun Lyu, Xiaowei Yu, Lu Zhang, Tianming Liu, Dajiang Zhu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The 3-hinge gyrus (3HG) is a newly defined folding pattern, which is the conjunction of gyri coming from three directions in cortical folding. Many studies demonstrated that 3HGs can be reliable nodes when constructing brain networks or connectome since they simultaneously possess commonality and individuality across different individual brains and populations. However, 3HGs are identified and validated within individual spaces, making it difficult to directly serve as the brain network nodes due to the absence of cross-subject correspondence. The 3HG correspondences represent the intrinsic regulation of brain organizational architecture, traditional image-based registration methods tend to fail because individual anatomical properties …

Brain-Adapter: Enhancing Neurological Disorder Analysis With Adapter-Tuning Multimodal Large Language Models, Jing Zhang, Xiaowei Yu, Yanjun Lyu, Lu Zhang, Tong Chen, Chao Cao, Yan Zhuang, Minheng Chen, Tianming Liu, Dajiang Zhu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Understanding brain disorders is crucial for accurate clinical diagnosis and treatment. Recent advances in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) offer a promising approach to interpreting medical images with the support of text descriptions. However, previous research has primarily focused on 2D medical images, leaving richer spatial information of 3D images under-explored, and single-modality-based methods are limited by overlooking the critical clinical information contained in other modalities. To address this issue, this paper proposes Brain-Adapter, a novel approach that incorporates an extra bottleneck layer to learn new knowledge and instill it into the original pre-trained knowledge. The major idea is to …

Feature Fusion Transferability Aware Transformer For Unsupervised Domain Adaptation, Xiaowei Yu, Zhe Huang, Zao Zhang

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) aims to leverage the knowledge learned from labeled source domains to improve performance on the unlabeled target domains. While Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been dominant in previous UDA methods, recent research has shown promise in applying Vision Transformers (ViTs) to this task. In this study, we propose a novel Feature Fusion Transferability Aware Transformer (FFTAT) to enhance ViT performance in UDA tasks. Our method introduces two key innovations: First, we introduce a patch discriminator to evaluate the transferability of patches, generating a transferability matrix. We integrate this matrix into self-attention, directing the model to focus …

Echopulse: Ecg Controlled Echocardiograms Video Generation, Yiwei Li, Sekeun Kim, Zihao Wu, Hanqi Jiang, Yi Pan, Pengfei Jin, Sifan Song, Yucheng Shi, Xiaowei Yu, Tianze Yang, Tianming Liu, Quanzheng Li, Xiang Li

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Echocardiography (ECHO) is essential for cardiac assessments, but its video quality and interpretation heavily rely on manual expertise, leading to inconsistent results from clinical and portable devices. ECHO video generation offers a solution by improving automated monitoring through synthetic data and generating high-quality videos from routine health data. However, existing models often face high computational costs, slow inference, and rely on complex conditional prompts that require experts' annotations. To address these challenges, we propose ECHOPulse, an ECG-conditioned ECHO video generation model. ECHOPulse introduces two key advancements: (1) it accelerates ECHO video generation by leveraging VQ-VAE tokenization and masked visual token …

Exploring The Trade-Offs: Unified Large Language Models Vs Local Fine-Tuned Models For Highly-Specific Radiology Nli Task, Zihao Wu, Lu Zhang, Chao Cao, Xiaowei Yu, Zhengliang Liu, Lin Zhao, Yiwei Li, Haixing Dai, Chong Ma, Gang Li, Wei Liu, Quanzheng Li, Dinggang Shen, Xiang Li, Dajiang Zhu, Tianming Liu

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Recently, ChatGPT and GPT-4 have emerged and gained immense global attention due to their unparalleled performance in language processing. Despite demonstrating impressive capability in various open-domain tasks, their adequacy in highly specific fields like radiology remains untested. Radiology presents unique linguistic phenomena distinct from open-domain data due to its specificity and complexity. Assessing the performance of large language models (LLMs) in such specific domains is crucial not only for a thorough evaluation of their overall performance but also for providing valuable insights into future model design directions: whether model design should be generic or domain specific. To this end, in …

Sosta: Skill-Oriented Stable Task Assignment With Bidirectional Preferences In Crowdsourcing, Riya Samanta, Soumya K. Ghosh, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Traditional task assignment approaches in crowdsourcing platforms have focused on optimizing utility for workers or tasks, often neglecting the general utility of the platform and the influence of mutual preference considering skill availability and budget restrictions. This oversight can destabilize task allocation outcomes, diminishing user experience, and, ultimately, the platform's long-term utility and gives rise to the Worker Task Stable Matching (WTSM) problem. To solve WTSM, we propose the Skill-oriented Stable Task Assignment with a Bi-directional Preference (SoSTA) method based on deferred acceptance strategy. SoSTA aims to generate stable allocations between tasks and workers considering mutually their preferences, optimizing overall …

Dashar: An Implementation Of Augmented Reality Technology For Automotive Applications, Trevor D. Brown

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Since the advent of the modern automobile, manufacturers have provided means of tracking various critical data points associated with automobile operation, with the most prominent and standardized method being the instrument cluster. These data points include, but are not limited to, automobile speed, engine speed, fuel level, oil temperature, radiator (water) temperature, and battery charge. While this data is updated in real-time as the automobile is running, traditional instrument clusters cannot be modified or adjusted to the automobile driver’s needs, unless extensive after-market modifications are made. These modifications can be expensive, and require great understanding of the automobile’s assembly.

Alongside …

Integration Of Agile Approach Into The Implementation Of The Iso/Sae 21434 On Top Of The V-Model To Enable Continuous Secure-By-Design Automotive Cybersecurity Development, Pooja Patil

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The rapid evolution of technology is revolutionizing the automotive industry, with connected and autonomous vehicles at the forefront. These vehicles rely on complex digital ecosystems to enhance safety and efficiency but are increasingly vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. Addressing these challenges requires following robust development methodologies, while complying with cybersecurity standards. This study introduces a framework that merges the widely used agile methodology practices with the ISO/SAE 21434 standard to support secure-by-design automotive product development. Traditional development approaches like the V-model provide structured and linear project phases, but they often lack the flexibility and the ability to adapt to evolving security …

An Algorithm And Computation To Verify Legendre's Conjecture Up 7 · 1013, Jonathan Sorenson, Jonathan Webster

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We state a general purpose algorithm for quickly finding primes in evenly divided sub-intervals. Legendre’s conjecture claims that for every positive integer n, there exists a prime between n² and (n + 1)². Oppermann’s conjecture subsumes Legendre’s conjecture by claiming there are primes between n2 and n(n + 1) and also between n(n + 1) and (n + 1)². Using Cramér’s conjecture as the basis for a heuristic run-time analysis, we show that our algorithm can verify Oppermann’s conjecture, and hence also Legendre’s conjecture, for all n ≤ N in time O(N log N log …

On The Hölder Continuity Of The Brascamp-Lieb Constant, Ori Friesen

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

The Brascamp-Lieb inequality is a generalization of many well-known multilinear functional inequalities. The Brascamp-Lieb constant is the best constant that works for the Brascamp-Lieb inequality for a given tuple of input linear maps and powers. If we keep the powers constant while varying the input linear maps, the Brascamp-Lieb constant becomes a function of the linear maps. In this thesis, we explore the Hölder continuity of the Brascamp-Lieb constant. Specifically,we prove that the general 4-linear case of the Brascamp-Lieb inequality is locally Lipschitz continuous. Additionally, we provide an improvement of a previous result on the local Hölder continuity of the …

Artificial Intelligence In Health Care: Business Opportunities And Ethical Challenges, Ankita Srivastava,, Marco Marabelli, Jeffrey Moriarty

Ethics Publication

Artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular generative AI (GAI), are making incredible progress toward automation. The pervasive and invasive nature of these technologies are affecting every industry, and health care is no exception. This paper summarizes insights derived from a panel that the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics and the Center for Health and Business at Bentley University hosted in March 2024. The panel invited three qualified health care professionals: Evan Carey, Susan Persky and John Torous. The panelists are all active in multiple aspects of AI in health care but represent a focus on the key areas of policy …

Comparing Unidirectional, Bidirectional, And Word2vec Models For Discovering Vulnerabilities In Compiled Lifted Code, Gary Mccully, John Hastings, Shengjie Xu, Adam Fortier

Research & Publications

Ransomware and other forms of malware cause significant financial and operational damage to organizations by exploiting long-standing and often difficult-to-detect software vulnerabilities. To detect vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows in compiled code, this research investigates the application of unidirectional transformer-based embeddings, specifically GPT-2. Using a dataset of LLVM functions, we trained a GPT-2 model to generate embeddings, which were subsequently used to build LSTM neural networks to differentiate between vulnerable and non-vulnerable code. Our study reveals that embeddings from the GPT-2 model significantly outperform those from bidirectional models of BERT and RoBERTa, achieving an accuracy of 92.5\% and an F1-score …

All We (And Llms) Need Is Fuzzy: An Argument, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have spectacular successes -- but they also have surprising failures that an average person with common sense could easily avoid. It is therefore desirable to incorporate the imprecise ("fuzzy") common sense into LLMs. A natural question is: to what extent will this help? This way, we may avoid a few simple mistakes, but will it significantly improve the LLMs' performance? What portion of the gap between current LLMs and ideal perfect AI-based agents can be, in principle, covered by using fuzzy techniques? Judging by the fact that few researchers working on LLMs (and on …

How To Share A Success, How To Share A Crisis, And How All This Is Related To Fuzzy, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, a group of people needs to share a success. What is the fair way to share this success? Nobelist John Nash showed that under reasonable conditions, the group should select the alternative for which the product of utility gains is the largest possible. This solution makes perfect sense from the fuzzy-formalized commonsense viewpoint: it maximizes the degree of confidence that all participants are happy. A natural question is: can we extend this result to a different class of situations, when a group of people needs to share sacrifices caused by a crisis? In this paper, we …

Ai 101: What It Can (And Can't) Do For You, April Sheppard

Staff and Faculty Scholarship

In this presentation, April defines AI, describes how it works, reviews some pros and cons, and finally discusses what AI can actually accomplish in its current iteration.

Computing In The Commonwealth: Specialized Education In Computer Science And Information Technology For High School Students In Virginia – An Environmental Scan, Amy Corning, Jonathan D. Becker, Jon Graham, James Carrigan, Keisha Tennessee

ICRE Publications

Over the past two decades, Virginia has invested substantially in STEM education, in part through specialized programs focused on computer science and information technology (CS/IT). This study represents the first effort to identify Virginia’s specialized secondary CS/IT programs and examine them collectively. Findings from the statewide environmental scan indicate that the programs are delivered through a wide variety of institutional structures, including Governor’s STEM Academies, Governor’s Schools, specialty centers, and academies, but most often through Career and Technical Education (CTE) centers. Programs tend to be concentrated in metropolitan areas, and some rural divisions may not be served. The programs provide …

Chalkboards To Chatbots: Helping Faculty Harness Ai For The Future Of Higher Education, Justin C. Grace

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into nursing education presented significant opportunities yet posed challenges due to varied faculty readiness. This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) quality improvement (QI) project evaluated an educational intervention aimed at enhancing nursing faculty's AI proficiency and confidence at Regis University’s Rueckert-Hartman College for Health Professions. Using a mixed-methods, pre- and post-intervention design, validated surveys assessed changes in faculty perceptions, knowledge, and skills related to AI. The intervention included a digital toolkit with nine instructional videos demonstrating practical AI applications using FreedAI’s large language model, ChatGPT, supported by voiceover narration and closed captioning. Data analysis involved descriptive …

Analysis And Authentication Of An Optical Method For Early Detection Of Harmful Algal Blooms, Cody Schumacher

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The proliferation and frequency of harmful algal blooms (HABs) attributed to eutrophication, storm events and a changing climate have been an increasing concern in both lotic and lentic freshwater ecosystems. Methods of detecting HABs have been explored through fluorescent measurement and sample analysis, but are often expensive and time-consuming. A novel smart device application is in development to detect HABs based on images captured and analyzed by machine learning algorithms trained to distinguish potential cyanobacterial blooms. The HABs App model accurately detected cyanobacteria in strong relationship with biovolume concentrations (R² = 0.996) within the Greenup Pool of the Ohio …

Pervasive Sensing To Correlate Vehicle Driving Behavior With City-Scale Traffic Dynamics, Debasree Das, Shameek Bhattacharjee, Sandip Chakraborty, Bivas Mitra, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Individual driving behavior is a pivotal element that shapes the overall traffic dynamics in a city. In this work, we study and analyze the complex web of relationships between individual driving behaviors and their impact on the overall traffic dynamics of a smart city with two primary objectives: first, understanding the spatial interaction between individual vehicles and their impact on each other, and second, finding anomalous driving behaviors, which lead to congestion and traffic incidents. Specifically, we introduce an overarching modular framework investigating human factors of driver characteristics, vehicle attributes, geographical terrain surrounding the road infrastructure, and environmental conditions. Analyzing …

Smartsla: Enabling Quality Of Service In Blockchain-Enabled Iot Networks, Kyle M. Whitlatch, Asad Waqar Malik, Sanjay Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The significant advancement in Internet of Things (IoT) adoption has enabled Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) to mitigate IoT sensors limited computational, transmission power constraints, and data distribution overhead. However, integrating MEC with the IoT ecosystem poses several challenges, resulting in integrity issues with the MECs, impacting their capacity to effectively serve users seeking data generated by IoT sensors. To address this, we propose SmartSLA, a blockchain based solution to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) from third party IoT devices. SmartSLA leverages the decentralized and immutable nature of blockchain to combat the shortcomings of MECs. Using smart contracts, we develop a …

Parallel Multi Objective Shortest Path Update Algorithm In Large Dynamic Networks, S. M. Shovan, Arindam Khanda, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The multi objective shortest path (MOSP) problem, crucial in various practical domains, seeks paths that optimize multiple objectives. Due to its high computational complexity, numerous parallel heuristics have been developed for static networks. However, real-world networks are often dynamic where the network topology changes with time. Efficiently updating the shortest path in such networks is challenging, and existing algorithms for static graphs are inadequate for these dynamic conditions, necessitating novel approaches. Here, we first develop a parallel algorithm to efficiently update a single objective shortest path (SOSP) in fully dynamic networks, capable of accommodating both edge insertions and deletions. Building …

J-Necora: A Framework For Optimal Resource Allocation In Cloud-Edge-Things Continuum For Industrial Applications With Mobile Nodes, Marco Pettorali, Francesca Righetti, Carlo Vallati, Sajal K. Das, Giuseppe Anastasi

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) landscape, where the Cloud-to-Things Continuum (C2TC) paradigm is now a reality, industrial applications need to cope with highly heterogeneous network and computing resources. Moreover, many industrial applications also involve Mobile Nodes (MNs). Efficient allocation of network and computing resources to meet the stringent requirements of such applications is often a very challenging task. In this paper, we propose J-NECORA (Joint NEtwork and COmputing Resource Allocation), a comprehensive analytical framework to derive the optimal joint allocation of network and computing resources in the C2TC, that guarantees the application requirements, even in the presence of …

The Impacts Of Artificial Intelligence In Radiology, Misty Farmer, Wendy Trzyna

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Introduction: There has been significant growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the healthcare industry, especially in Medical Imaging. Radiology has been the clear frontrunner in the adoption of AI in medicine, due in part to the massive amount of digital data available for use in Deep Learning (DL) AI integration has the potential to solve multiple challenges in radiology, address workload issues and transform the field.

Purpose of the Study: The purpose of the research was to evaluate the impact of implementing Artificial Intelligence in radiology to determine if these technologies have had an impact …

A Survey-Based Quantitative Analysis Of Stress Factors And Their Impacts Among Cybersecurity Professionals, Sunil Arora, John D. Hastings

Research & Publications

This study investigates the prevalence and underlying causes of work-related stress and burnout among cybersecurity professionals using a quantitative survey approach guided by the Job Demands-Resources model. Analysis of responses from 50 cybersecurity practitioners reveals an alarming reality: 44% report experiencing severe work-related stress and burnout, while an additional 28% are uncertain about their condition. The demanding nature of cybersecurity roles, unrealistic expectations, and unsupportive organizational cultures emerge as primary factors fueling this crisis. Notably, 66% of respondents perceive cybersecurity jobs as more stressful than other IT positions, with 84% facing additional challenges due to the pandemic and recent high-profile …

Analysis Of Computational Approaches To Cognitive Diagnosis, Andrew Toussaint

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Access to good education is crucial to the well-being of individuals as well as communities. Recent technological advancements in the field of computer science show promise of generating precise descriptions of student cognitive states regarding specified knowledge concepts through a process called cognitive diagnosis. This can facilitate the creation of more targeted lesson plans and more personalized educational software. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of four computerized cognitive diagnosis models. The models include three existing models: Item Response Theory, Neural Cognitive Diagnosis, Knowledge Association Neural Cognitive Diagnosis, and a proposed model, Concept Agnostic Knowledge Evaluation, which was used …

Icrop+: An Edge-Boosted Crop Disease Detection System Via Tinyml And Lora Communication, Xu Tao, Jackson Butcher, Simone Silvestri, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Crop disease detection is essential for controlling dis-ease spread and minimizing agricultural losses. In this demo, we present an implementation of iCrop+, an end-to-end autonomous crop disease detection system that integrates on-device AI, low-power long-range communication (LoRa), and server-based deep learning to create a hybrid architecture suitable for real-world deployment. The prototype efficiently balances local processing and remote inference through category-based optimization, adaptive classification, and intelligent data transmission, ensuring that only the most informative segments are transmitted to the server. Built on low-cost devices such as Raspberry Pi, LoRa transceiver modules, and a laptop, the demo showcases its potential for …

Message From The Phd Dissertation Showcase Chairs, Sanjay Kumar Madria, Anita Graser

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Resource Allocation In Cloud-To- Things Continuum For Real-Time Iot Applications, Marco Pettorali, Francesca Righetti, Carlo Vallati, Sajal K. Das, Giuseppe Anastasi

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The proliferation of loT devices and the growing demand for real-time applications have driven a shift in the computation paradigm, from Cloud computing to Edge computing, creating the Cloud-to-Things Continuum (C2TC). Many real-time loT applications involve Mobile Nodes (MNs), which may dynamically join or leave. In addition, in future reconfigurable loT systems, applications with different requirements will coexist, and will be dynamically introduced or removed. All this asks for dynamic management mechanisms to ensure the requirements of different real-time applications, even when the system configuration changes over time. In this paper, we propose DJ-NECORA, an online algorithm for the joint …

Virtual Network Embedding: Literature Assessment, Recent Advancements, Opportunities, And Challenges, Anurag Satpathy, Manmath Narayan Sahoo, Chittaranjan Swain, Paolo Bellavista, Mohsen Guizani, Khan Muhammad, Sambit Bakshi

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Network virtualization (NV) allows service providers (SPs) to instantiate logically isolated entities called virtual networks (VNs) on top of a substrate network (SN). Though VNs bring about multiple benefits, particularly in terms of economic costs and elasticity, they also force various technical challenges to be addressed. The primary one is the issue of optimally allocating resources to VNs, also termed virtual network embedding (VNE). This paper presents an exhaustive survey of VNE by extensively covering the state-of-the-art research field in this very active field and focusing on the emerging research trends in industry and academia over the last decade. In …

Artificial Intelligence In Health Care: Business Opportunities And Ethical Challenges, Ankita Srivastava, Marco Marabelli, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular generative AI (GAI), are making incredible progress toward automation. The pervasive and invasive nature of these technologies are affecting every industry, and health care is no exception. This paper summarizes insights derived from a panel that the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics and the Center for Health and Business at Bentley University hosted in March 2024. The panel invited three qualified health care professionals: Evan Carey, Susan Persky and John Torous. The panelists are all active in multiple aspects of AI in health care but represent a focus on the key areas of policy …