Text preprocessing is a common task in machine learning applications that involves hand-labeling sets. Although automatic and semi-automatic annotation of text data is a growing field, researchers need to develop models that use resources as efficiently as possible for a learning task. The goal of this work was to learn faster with fewer resources. In this paper, the combination of active and transfer learning was examined with the purpose of developing an effective text categorization method. These two forms of learning have proven their efficiency and capacity to train correct models with substantially less training data. We considered three types of criteria for selecting training points: random selection, uncertainty sampling criterion and active transfer selection. Experimental evaluation was performed on five data sets from different domains. The findings of the experiments suggest that by combining active and transfer learning, the algorithm performs better with fewer labels than random selection of training points.

This paper presents an automated defect management system based on machine learning and computer vision that detects and quantifies different types of defects in porcelain products. The system is developed in collaboration with an industrial porcelain producer and integrates robots, artificial vision and machine learning. At present, in most of the companies involved in the porcelain industry, defect detection is performed manually by employees. An intelligent system for product monitoring and defect detection is very much needed. Our proposed system is implemented through a convolutional neural network which analyzes images of the products and predicts if the product is defective or not. Experimental evaluation on an image data set acquired at the industrial partner shows promising results. The proposed architecture will finally have a positive economic impact for the company by optimizing the production flow and reducing the production costs.

Images and text represent types of content that are used together for conveying a message. The process of mapping images to text can provide very useful information and can be included in many applications from the medical domain, applications for blind people, social networking, etc. In this paper, we investigate an approach for mapping images to text using a Kernel Ridge Regression model. We considered two types of features: simple RGB pixel-value features and image features extracted with deep-learning approaches. We investigated several neural network architectures for image feature extraction: VGG16, Inception V3, ResNet50, Xception. The experimental evaluation was performed on three data sets from different domains. The texts associated with images represent objective descriptions for two of the three data sets and subjective descriptions for the other data set. The experimental results show that the more complex deep-learning approaches that were used for feature extraction perform better than simple RGB pixel-value approaches. Moreover, the ResNet50 network architecture performs best in comparison to the other three deep network architectures considered for extracting image features. The model error obtained using the ResNet50 network is less by approx. 0.30 than other neural network architectures. We extracted natural language descriptors of images and we made a comparison between original and generated descriptive words. Furthermore, we investigated if there is a difference in performance between the type of text associated with the images: subjective or objective. The proposed model generated more similar descriptions to the original ones for the data set containing objective descriptions whose vocabulary is simpler, bigger and clearer.

(1) Background: This research investigates the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly biomimetic convolutional neural networks (CNNs), for the automatic classification of gastrointestinal (GI) polyps in endoscopic images. The study combines AI and Transfer learning techniques to support early detection of colorectal cancer by enhancing diagnostic accuracy with pre-trained models; (2) Methods: The Kvasir dataset, comprising 4000 annotated endoscopic images across eight polyp categories, was used. Images were pre-processed via normalisation, resizing, and data augmentation. Several CNN architectures, including state-of-the-art optimized ResNet50, DenseNet121, and MobileNetV2, were trained and evaluated. Models were assessed through training, validation, and testing phases, using performance metrics such as overall accuracy, confusion matrix, precision, recall, and F1 score; (3) Results: ResNet50 achieved the highest validation accuracy at 90.5%, followed closely by DenseNet121 with 87.5% and MobileNetV2 with 86.5%. The models demonstrated good generalisation, with small differences between training and validation accuracy. The average inference time was under 0.5 s on a computer with limited resources, confirming real-time applicability. Confusion matrix analysis indicates that common errors frequently occur between visually similar classes, particularly when reviewed by less-experienced medical physicians. These errors underscore the difficulty of distinguishing subtle features in gastrointestinal imagery and highlight the value of model-assisted diagnostics; (4) Conclusions: The obtained results confirm that Deep learning-based CNN architectures, combined with Transfer learning and optimisation techniques, can classify accurately endoscopic images and support medical diagnostics.

Computer vision is widely used in control of manufacturing processes. However, due to the relatively high costs, automated visual inspection is applied only for the final product and not after each production phase. Faulty products are identified at the end of the production pipeline, little information is provided with regard the causes and the production phase that produced the defect products. This paper presents a deep CNN for the enhancement of the computer vision system by providing additional information on the type of the product and consequently on the production phase that generated that product, and fault, respectively. The CNN has been integrated into the pipeline for the automated process control. This information is important for further decision makings in production flow management. The paper presents full description of the deep CNN model design with discussions based on image analytics carried out on 12k database of images of products from the porcelain industry.