Biblio

We propose an Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Deep Learning (DL)-based image analysis framework for hardware assurance of digital integrated circuits (ICs). Our aim is to examine and verify various hardware information from analyzing the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images of an IC. In our proposed framework, we apply DL-based methods at all essential steps of the analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such framework that makes heavy use of DL-based methods at all essential analysis steps. Further, to reduce time and effort required in model re-training, we propose and demonstrate various automated or semi-automated training data preparation methods and demonstrate the effectiveness of using synthetic data to train a model. By applying our proposed framework to analyzing a set of SEM images of a large digital IC, we prove its efficacy. Our DL-based methods are fast, accurate, robust against noise, and can automate tasks that were previously performed mainly manually. Overall, we show that DL-based methods can largely increase the level of automation in hardware assurance of digital ICs and improve its accuracy.

Gait phase segmentation is the process of identifying the start and end of different phases within a gait cycle. It is essential to many medical applications, such as disease diagnosis or rehabilitation. This work utilizes inertial measurement units (IMUs) mounted on the individual's foot to gather gait information and develops a gait phase segmentation method based on the collected signals. The proposed method utilizes a weighted dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm to measure the distance between two different gait signals, and a k-nearest neighbors (kNN) algorithm to obtain the gait phase estimates. To reduce the complexity of the DTW-based kNN search, we propose a neural network-based graph embedding scheme that is able to map the IMU signals associated with each gait cycle into a distance-preserving low-dimensional representation while also producing a prediction on the k nearest neighbors of the test signal. Experiments are conducted on self-collected IMU gait signals to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.