Existing single-modal RGB trackers often face performance bottlenecks in complex dynamic scenes, while the introduction of event sensors offers new potential for enhancing tracking capabilities. However, most current RGB-event fusion methods, primarily designed in the spatial domain using convolutional, Transformer, or Mamba architectures, fail to fully exploit the unique temporal response and high-frequency characteristics of event data. To address this, we1 propose FreqTrack, a frequency-aware RGBE tracking framework that establishes complementary inter-modal correlations through frequency-domain transformations for more robust feature fusion. We design a Spectral Enhancement Transformer (SET) layer that incorporates multi-head dynamic Fourier filtering to adaptively enhance and select frequency-domain features. Additionally, we develop a Wavelet Edge Refinement (WER) module, which leverages learnable wavelet transforms to explicitly extract multi-scale edge structures from event data, effectively improving modeling capability in high-speed and low-light scenarios. Extensive experiments on the COESOT and FE108 datasets demonstrate that FreqTrack achieves highly competitive performance, particularly attaining leading precision of 76.6\% on the COESOT benchmark, validating the effectiveness of frequency-domain modeling for RGBE tracking.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.14526
Accurate and resource-efficient automated diagnosis is a cornerstone of modern agricultural expert systems. While Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have established benchmarks in plant pathology, their ability to capture long-range spatial dependencies is often limited by standard pooling layers, and their high memory footprint hinders deployment on portable devices. This paper proposes a lightweight hybrid CNN-LSTM system for bean leaf disease classification. By integrating an LSTM layer to model the spatial-sequential relationships within feature maps, our hybrid architecture achieves a 94.38% accuracy while maintaining an exceptionally small footprint of 1.86 MB; a 70% reduction in size compared to traditional CNN-based systems. Furthermore, we provide a systematic evaluation of image augmentation strategies, demonstrating that tailored transformations are superior to generic combinations for maintaining the integrity of diagnostic patterns. Results on the $\textit{ibean}$ dataset confirm that the proposed system achieves state-of-the-art F1 scores of 99.22% with EfficientNet-B7+LSTM, providing a robust and scalable framework for real-time agricultural decision support in resource-constrained environments. The code and augmented datasets used in this study are publicly available on this $\href{this https URL}{Github}$ repo.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13835
Vision transformers (ViT) have been shown to allow for more flexible feature detection and can outperform convolutional neural network (CNN) when pre-trained on sufficient data. Due to their promising feature detection capabilities, we deployed ViTs for morphological classification of anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) versus classic Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). We had previously designed a ViT model which was trained on a small dataset of 1,200 image patches in fully supervised training. That model achieved a diagnostic accuracy of 100% and an F1 score of 1.0 on the independent test set. Since fully supervised training is not a practical method due to lack of expertise resources in both the training and testing phases, we conducted a recent study on a modified approach to training data (weakly supervised training) and show that labeling training image patch automatically at the slide level of each whole-slide-image is a more practical solution for clinical use of Vision Transformer. Our ViT model, trained on a larger dataset of 100,000 image patches, yields evaluation metrics with significant accuracy, F1 score, and area under the curve (AUC) at 91.85%, 0.92, and 0.98, respectively. These are respectable values that qualify this ViT model, with weakly supervised training, as a suitable tool for a deep learning module in clinical model development using automated image patch extraction.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13795
Sparse mixture-of-experts (MoE) layers have been shown to substantially increase model capacity without a proportional increase in computational cost and are widely used in transformer architectures, where they typically replace feed-forward network blocks. In contrast, integrating sparse MoE layers into convolutional neural networks (CNNs) remains inconsistent, with most prior work focusing on fine-grained MoEs operating at the filter or channel levels. In this work, we investigate a coarser, patch-wise formulation of sparse MoE layers for semantic segmentation, where local regions are routed to a small subset of convolutional experts. Through experiments on the Cityscapes and BDD100K datasets using encoder-decoder and backbone-based CNNs, we conduct a design analysis to assess how architectural choices affect routing dynamics and expert specialization. Our results demonstrate consistent, architecture-dependent improvements (up to +3.9 mIoU) with little computational overhead, while revealing strong design sensitivity. Our work provides empirical insights into the design and internal dynamics of sparse MoE layers in CNN-based dense prediction. Our code is available at this https URL.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13761
Tuning of gate-defined semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) is a major bottleneck for scaling spin qubit technologies. We present a deep learning (DL) driven, semantic-segmentation pipeline that performs charge auto-tuning by locating transition lines in full charge stability diagrams (CSDs) and returns gate voltage targets for the single charge regime. We assemble and manually annotate a large, heterogeneous dataset of 1015 experimental CSDs measured from silicon QD devices, spanning nine design geometries, multiple wafers, and fabrication runs. A U-Net style convolutional neural network (CNN) with a MobileNetV2 encoder is trained and validated through five-fold group cross validation. Our model achieves an overall offline tuning success of 80.0% in locating the single-charge regime, with peak performance exceeding 88% for some designs. We analyze dominant failure modes and propose targeted mitigations. Finally, wide-range diagram segmentation also naturally enables scalable physic-based feature extraction that can feed back to fabrication and design workflows and outline a roadmap for real-time integration in a cryogenic wafer prober. Overall, our results show that neural network (NN) based wide-diagram segmentation is a practical step toward automated, high-throughput charge tuning for silicon QD qubits.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13662
Phishing websites now rely heavily on visual imitation-copied logos, similar layouts, and matching colours-to avoid detection by text- and URL-based systems. This paper presents a deep learning approach that uses webpage screenshots for image-based phishing detection. Two vision models, ConvNeXt-Tiny and Vision Transformer (ViT-Base), were tested to see how well they handle visually deceptive phishing pages. The framework covers dataset creation, preprocessing, transfer learning with ImageNet weights, and evaluation using different decision thresholds. The results show that ConvNeXt-Tiny performs the best overall, achieving the highest F1-score at the optimised threshold and running more efficiently than ViT-Base. This highlights the strength of convolutional models for visual phishing detection and shows why threshold tuning is important for real-world deployment. As future work, the curated dataset used in this study will be released to support reproducibility and encourage further research in this area. Unlike many existing studies that primarily report accuracy, this work places greater emphasis on threshold-aware evaluation to better reflect real-world deployment conditions. By examining precision, recall, and F1-score across different decision thresholds, the study identifies operating points that balance detection performance and false-alarm control. In addition, the side-by-side comparison of ConvNeXt-Tiny and ViT-Base under the same experimental setup offers practical insights into how convolutional and transformer-based architectures differ in robustness and computational efficiency for visual phishing detection.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13555
Turbofan engine degradation under sustained operational stress necessitates robust prognostic systems capable of accurately estimating the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of critical components. Existing deep learning approaches frequently fail to simultaneously capture multi-sensor spatial correlations and long-range temporal dependencies, while standard symmetric loss functions inadequately penalize the safety-critical error of over-estimating residual life. This study proposes a hybrid architecture integrating Twin-Stage One-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Networks (1D-CNN), a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) network, and a custom Bahdanau Additive Attention mechanism. The model was trained and evaluated on the NASA Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS) FD001 sub-dataset employing a zero-leakage preprocessing pipeline, piecewise-linear RUL labeling capped at 130 cycles, and the NASA-specified asymmetric exponential loss function that disproportionately penalizes over-estimation to enforce industrial safety constraints. Experiments on 100 test engines achieved a Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 17.52 cycles and a NASA S-Score of 922.06. Furthermore, extracted attention weight heatmaps provide interpretable, per-engine insights into the temporal progression of degradation, supporting informed maintenance decision-making. The proposed framework demonstrates competitive performance against established baselines and offers a principled approach to safe, interpretable prognostics in industrial settings.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13459
Accurate Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) forecasting is critical for grid stability, particularly in arid regions characterized by rapid aerosol fluctuations. While recent trends favor computationally expensive Transformer-based architectures, this paper challenges the prevailing "complexity-first" paradigm. We propose a lightweight, Physics-Informed Hybrid CNN-BiLSTM framework that prioritizes domain knowledge over architectural depth. The model integrates a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for spatial feature extraction with a Bi-Directional LSTM for capturing temporal dependencies. Unlike standard data-driven approaches, our model is explicitly guided by a vector of 15 engineered features including Clear-Sky indices and Solar Zenith Angle - rather than relying solely on raw historical data. Hyperparameters are rigorously tuned using Bayesian Optimization to ensure global optimality. Experimental validation using NASA POWER data in Sudan demonstrates that our physics-guided approach achieves a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 19.53 W/m^2, significantly outperforming complex attention-based baselines (RMSE 30.64 W/m^2). These results confirm a "Complexity Paradox": in high-noise meteorological tasks, explicit physical constraints offer a more efficient and accurate alternative to self-attention mechanisms. The findings advocate for a shift towards hybrid, physics-aware AI for real-time renewable energy management.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13455
Mapping the spatial distribution of species is essential for conservation policy and invasive species management. Species distribution models (SDMs) are the primary tools for this task, serving two purposes: achieving robust predictive performance while providing ecological insights into the driving factors of distribution. However, the increasing complexity of deep learning SDMs has made extracting these insights more challenging. To reconcile these objectives, we propose the first implementation of concept-based Explainable AI (XAI) for SDMs. We leverage the Robust TCAV (Testing with Concept Activation Vectors) methodology to quantify the influence of landscape concepts on model predictions. To enable this, we provide a new open-access landscape concept dataset derived from high-resolution multispectral and LiDAR drone imagery. It includes 653 patches across 15 distinct landscape concepts and 1,450 random reference patches, designed to suit a wide range of species. We demonstrate this approach through a case study of two aquatic insects, Plecoptera and Trichoptera, using two Convolutional Neural Networks and one Vision Transformer. Results show that concept-based XAI helps validate SDMs against expert knowledge while uncovering novel associations that generate new ecological hypotheses. Robust TCAV also provides landscape-level information, useful for policy-making and land management. Code and datasets are publicly available.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13240
Satellite image restoration aims to improve image quality by compensating for degradations (e.g., noise and blur) introduced by the imaging system and acquisition conditions. As a fundamental preprocessing step, restoration directly impacts both ground-based product generation and emerging onboard AI applications. Traditional restoration pipelines based on sequential physical models are computationally intensive and slow, making them unsuitable for onboard environments. In this paper, we introduce ConvBEERS: a Convolutional Board-ready Embedded and Efficient Restoration model for Space to investigate whether a light and non-generative residual convolutional network, trained on simulated satellite data, can match or surpass a traditional ground-processing restoration pipeline across multiple operating conditions. Experiments conducted on simulated datasets and real Pleiades-HR imagery demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves competitive image quality, with a +6.9dB PSNR improvement. Evaluation on a downstream object detection task demonstrates that restoration significantly improves performance, with up to +5.1% mAP@50. In addition, successful deployment on a Xilinx Versal VCK190 FPGA validates its practical feasibility for satellite onboard processing, with a ~41x reduction in latency compared to the traditional pipeline. These results demonstrate the relevance of using lightweight CNNs to achieve competitive restoration quality while addressing real-world constraints in spaceborne systems.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12807
In recent years, Sound AI is being increasingly used to predict machine failures. By attaching a microphone to the machine of interest, one can get real time data on machine behavior from the field. Traditionally, Convolutional Neural Net (CNN) architectures have been used to analyze spectrogram images generated from the sounds captured and predict if the machine is functioning as expected. CNN architectures seem to work well empirically even though they have biases like locality and parameter-sharing which may not be completely relevant for spectrogram analysis. With the successful application of transformer-based models in the field of image processing starting with Vision Transformer (ViT) in 2020, there has been significant interest in leveraging these in the field of Sound AI. Since transformer-based architectures have significantly lower inductive biases, they are expected to perform better than CNNs at spectrogram analysis given enough data. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of transformer-driven architectures in analyzing Sound data and compares the embeddings they generate with CNNs on the specific task of machine fault detection.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12733
In this article, we propose the optimization of the resolution of time-frequency atoms and the regularization of fitting models to obtain better representations of heart sound signals. This is done by evaluating the classification performance of deep learning (DL) networks in discriminating five heart valvular conditions based on a new class of time-frequency feature matrices derived from the fitting models. We inspect several combinations of resolution and regularization, and the optimal one is that provides the highest performance. To this end, a fitting model is obtained based on a heart sound signal and an overcomplete dictionary of Gabor atoms using elastic net regularization of linear models. We consider two different DL architectures, the first mainly consisting of a 1D convolutional neural network (CNN) layer and a long short-term memory (LSTM) layer, while the second is composed of 1D and 2D CNN layers followed by an LSTM layer. The networks are trained with two algorithms, namely stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM) and adaptive moment (ADAM). Extensive experimentation has been conducted using a database containing heart sound signals of five heart valvular conditions. The best classification accuracy of $98.95\%$ is achieved with the second architecture when trained with ADAM and feature matrices derived from optimal models obtained with a Gabor dictionary consisting of atoms with high-time low-frequency resolution and imposing sparsity on the models.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12483
Modern diffusion-based inpainting models pose significant challenges for image forgery localization (IFL), as their full regeneration pipelines reconstruct the entire image via a latent decoder, disrupting the camera-level noise patterns that existing forensic methods rely on. We propose DiffusionPrint, a patch-level contrastive learning framework that learns a forensic signal robust to the spectral distortions introduced by latent decoding. It exploits the fact that inpainted regions generated by the same model share a consistent generative fingerprint, using this as a self-supervisory signal. DiffusionPrint trains a convolutional backbone via a MoCo-style objective with cross-category hard negative mining and a generator-aware classification head, producing a forensic feature map that serves as a highly discriminative secondary modality in fusion-based IFL frameworks. Integrated into TruFor, MMFusion, and a lightweight fusion baseline, DiffusionPrint consistently improves localization across multiple generative models, with gains of up to +28% on mask types unseen during fine-tuning and confirmed generalization to unseen generative architectures. Code is available at this https URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12443
Accurate characterization of suspicious breast lesions in mammography is important for early diagnosis and treatment planning. While Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are effective at extracting local visual patterns, they are less suited to modeling long-range dependencies. Vision Transformers (ViTs) address this limitation through self-attention, but their quadratic computational cost can be prohibitive. This paper presents a hybrid architecture that combines EfficientNetV2-M for local feature extraction with Vision Mamba, a State Space Model (SSM), for efficient global context modeling. The proposed model performs binary classification of abnormality-centered mammography regions of interest (ROIs) from the CBIS-DDSM dataset into benign and malignant classes. By combining a strong CNN backbone with a linear-complexity sequence model, the approach achieves strong lesion-level classification performance in an ROI-based setting.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12437
Automated diagnosis based on color fundus photography is essential for large-scale glaucoma screening. However, existing deep learning models are typically data-driven and lack explicit integration of retinal anatomical knowledge, which limits their robustness across heterogeneous clinical datasets. Moreover, pathological cues in fundus images may appear beyond predefined anatomical regions, making fixed-region feature extraction insufficient for reliable diagnosis. To address these challenges, we propose a retinal knowledge-oriented glaucoma screening framework that integrates dynamic multi-scale feature learning with domain-specific retinal priors. The framework adopts a tri-branch structure to capture complementary retinal representations, including global retinal context, structural features of the optic disc/cup, and dynamically localized pathological regions. A Dynamic Window Mechanism is devised to adaptively identify diagnostically informative regions, while a Knowledge-Enhanced Convolutional Attention Module incorporates retinal priors extracted from a pre-trained foundation model to guide attention learning. Extensive experiments on the large-scale AIROGS dataset demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms diverse baselines, achieving an AUC of 98.5% and an accuracy of 94.6%. Additional evaluations on multiple datasets from the SMDG-19 benchmark further confirm its strong cross-domain generalization capability, indicating that knowledge-guided attention combined with adaptive lesion localization can significantly improve the robustness of automated glaucoma screening systems.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12351
Pneumonia remains a leading cause of childhood mortality worldwide, with a heavy burden in low-resource settings such as Bangladesh where radiologist availability is limited. Most existing deep learning approaches treat pneumonia detection as a binary problem, overlooking the clinically critical distinction between bacterial and viral aetiology. This paper proposes CBAM-DenseNet121, a transfer-learning framework that integrates the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) into DenseNet121 for three-class chest X-ray classification: Normal, Bacterial Pneumonia, and Viral Pneumonia. We also conduct a systematic binary-task baseline study revealing that EfficientNetB3 (73.88%) underperforms even the custom CNN baseline (78.53%) -- a practically important negative finding for medical imaging model selection. To ensure statistical reliability, all experiments were repeated three times with independent random seeds (42, 7, 123), and results are reported as mean +/- standard deviation. CBAM-DenseNet121 achieves 84.29% +/- 1.14% test accuracy with per-class AUC scores of 0.9565 +/- 0.0010, 0.9610 +/- 0.0014, and 0.9187 +/- 0.0037 for bacterial pneumonia, normal, and viral pneumonia respectively. Grad-CAM visualizations confirm that the model attends to anatomically plausible pulmonary regions for each class, supporting interpretable deployment in resource-constrained clinical environments.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12305
Single-image super-resolution has progressed from deep convolutional baselines to stronger Transformer and state-space architectures, yet the corresponding performance gains typically come with higher training cost, longer engineering iteration, and heavier deployment burden. In many practical settings, multiple pretrained models with partially complementary behaviors are already available, and the binding constraint is no longer architectural capacity but how effectively their outputs can be combined without additional training. Rather than pursuing further architectural redesign, this paper proposes a training-free output-level ensemble framework. A dual-branch pipeline is constructed in which a Hybrid attention network with TLC inference provides stable main reconstruction, while a MambaIRv2 branch with geometric self-ensemble supplies strong compensation for high-frequency detail recovery. The two branches process the same low-resolution input independently and are fused in the image space via a lightweight weighted combination, without updating any model parameters or introducing an additional trainable module. As our solution to the NTIRE 2026 Image Super-Resolution ($\times 4$) Challenge, the proposed design consistently improves over the base branch and slightly exceeds the pure strong branch in PSNR at the best operating point under a unified DIV2K bicubic $\times 4$ evaluation protocol. Ablation studies confirm that output-level compensation provides a low-overhead and practically accessible upgrade path for existing super-resolution systems.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11564
Remote sensing archives are inherently distributed: Earth observation missions such as Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-3 have collectively accumulated more than 5 petabytes of imagery, stored and processed across many geographically dispersed platforms. Training machine learning models on such data in a centralized fashion is impractical due to data volume, sovereignty constraints, and geographic distribution. Federated learning (FL) addresses this by keeping data local and exchanging only model updates. A central challenge for remote sensing is the non-IID nature of Earth observation data: label distributions vary strongly by geographic region, degrading the convergence of standard FL algorithms. In this paper, we conduct a systematic empirical study of three FL strategies -- FedAvg, FedProx, and bulk synchronous parallel (BSP) -- applied to multi-label remote sensing image classification under controlled non-IID label-skew conditions. We evaluate three convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures of increasing depth (LeNet, AlexNet, and ResNet-34) and analyze the joint effect of algorithm choice, model capacity, client fraction, client count, batch size, and communication cost. Experiments on the UC Merced multi-label dataset show that FedProx outperforms FedAvg for deeper architectures under data heterogeneity, that BSP approaches centralized accuracy at the cost of high sequential communication, and that LeNet provides the best accuracy-communication trade-off for the dataset scale considered.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11562
The ``differentiability gap'' presents a primary bottleneck in Earth system deep learning: since models cannot be trained directly on non-differentiable scientific metrics and must rely on smooth proxies (e.g., MSE), they often fail to capture high-frequency details, yielding ``blurry'' outputs. We develop a framework that bridges this gap using two different methods to deal with non-differentiable functions: the first is to analytically approximate the original non-differentiable function into a differentiable equivalent one; the second is to learn differentiable surrogates for scientific functionals. We formulate the analytical approximation by relaxing discrete topological operations using temperature-controlled sigmoids and continuous logical operators. Conversely, our neural emulator uses Lipschitz-convolutional neural networks to stabilize gradient learning via: (1) spectral normalization to bound the Lipschitz constant; and (2) hard architectural constraints enforcing geometric principles. We demonstrate this framework's utility by developing the Minkowski image loss, a differentiable equivalent for the integral-geometric measures of surface precipitation fields (area, perimeter, connected components). Validated on the EUMETNET OPERA dataset, our constrained neural surrogate achieves high emulation accuracy, completely eliminating the geometric violations observed in unconstrained baselines. However, applying these differentiable surrogates to a deterministic super-resolution task reveals a fundamental trade-off: while strict Lipschitz regularization ensures optimization stability, it inherently over-smooths gradient signals, restricting the recovery of highly localized convective textures. This work highlights the necessity of coupling such topological constraints with stochastic generative architectures to achieve full morphological realism.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11422
Reliable recognition of standard cine cardiac MRI views is essential because each view determines which cardiac anatomy is visualized and which quantitative analyses can be performed. Incorrect view identification, whether by a human reader or an automated deep learning system, can propagate errors into segmentation, volumetric assessment, strain analysis, and valve evaluation. However, accurate view classification remains challenging under routine clinical variability in scanner vendor, acquisition protocol, motion artifacts, and plane prescription. We present ConvFormer3D-TAP, a cine-specific spatiotemporal architecture that integrates 3D convolutional tokenization with multiscale self-attention. The model is trained using masked spatiotemporal reconstruction and uncertainty-weighted multi-clip fusion to enhance robustness across cardiac phases and ambiguous temporal segments. The design captures complementary cues: local anatomical structure through convolutional priors and long-range cardiac-cycle dynamics through hierarchical attention. On a cohort of 150,974 clinically acquired cine sequences spanning six standard cine cardiac MRI views, ConvFormer3D-TAP achieved 96% validation accuracy with per-class F1-scores >= 0.94 and strong calibration (ECE = 0.025; Brier = 0.040). Error analysis shows that residual confusions are concentrated in anatomically adjacent long-axis and LVOT/AV view pairs, consistent with intrinsic prescription overlap. These results support ConvFormer3D-TAP as a scalable front-end for view routing, filtering and quality control in end-to-end cMRI workflows.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11389