Pub Date : 2026-01-20DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104166
Yongcheng Li , Lingcong Cai , Ying Lu , Xiao Han , Ma Li , Wenxing Lai , Xiangzhong Zhang , Xiaomao Fan
Blood cell identification is critical for hematological analysis as it aids physicians in diagnosing various blood-related diseases. In real-world scenarios, blood cell image datasets often present the issues of domain shift and data imbalance, posing challenges for accurate blood cell identification. To address these issues, we propose a novel blood cell classification method termed SADA via stain-aware domain alignment. The primary objective of this work is to mine domain-invariant features in the presence of domain shifts and data imbalance. To accomplish this objective, we propose a stain-based augmentation approach and a local alignment constraint to learn domain-invariant features. Furthermore, we propose a domain-invariant supervised contrastive learning strategy to capture discriminative features. We decouple the training process into two stages of domain-invariant feature learning and classification training, alleviating the problem of data imbalance. Experiment results on four public blood cell datasets and a private real dataset collected from the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University demonstrate that SADA can achieve a new state-of-the-art baseline, which is superior to the existing cutting-edge methods. The source code can be available at the URL (https://github.com/AnoK3111/SADA).
{"title":"Stain-aware domain alignment for imbalance blood cell classification","authors":"Yongcheng Li , Lingcong Cai , Ying Lu , Xiao Han , Ma Li , Wenxing Lai , Xiangzhong Zhang , Xiaomao Fan","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104166","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104166","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Blood cell identification is critical for hematological analysis as it aids physicians in diagnosing various blood-related diseases. In real-world scenarios, blood cell image datasets often present the issues of domain shift and data imbalance, posing challenges for accurate blood cell identification. To address these issues, we propose a novel blood cell classification method termed SADA via stain-aware domain alignment. The primary objective of this work is to mine domain-invariant features in the presence of domain shifts and data imbalance. To accomplish this objective, we propose a stain-based augmentation approach and a local alignment constraint to learn domain-invariant features. Furthermore, we propose a domain-invariant supervised contrastive learning strategy to capture discriminative features. We decouple the training process into two stages of domain-invariant feature learning and classification training, alleviating the problem of data imbalance. Experiment results on four public blood cell datasets and a private real dataset collected from the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University demonstrate that SADA can achieve a new state-of-the-art baseline, which is superior to the existing cutting-edge methods. The source code can be available at the URL (<span><span>https://github.com/AnoK3111/SADA</span><svg><path></path></svg></span>).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"131 ","pages":"Article 104166"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146014547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-19DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104162
Wuzhen Shi , Wu Yang , Zhihao Wu , Yang Wen
Existing prior-guided image inpainting methods show state-of-the-art performance. But their prior extraction is computationally expensive and unstable in accuracy. Besides, most of them only focus on the structure guidance, which hardly facilitates the repair of realistic textures. Inspired by the fact that gradient maps are easy to extract and reflect both image structure and fine texture details, this paper proposes a gradient-guided network for image inpainting, which first uses the gradient context information and multi-level image compensation features to repair the gradient, and then uses the repaired gradient features to guide the generation of realistic image. A gradient-driven attention (GDA) module is introduced for efficient prior guidance. Additionally, a context validity-aware (CVA) module is proposed for progressively filling hole regions of images, which accurately utilizes both local and contextual information for image inpainting via validity-aware measurements. Furthermore, by artificially manipulating the generation of the gradient map, our gradient-guided image inpainting method enables user-guided image editing, which effectively increases the diversity of image generation and enhances the flexibility of image editing. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Extensive ablation experiments are also conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of each module.
{"title":"Validity-aware context modeling for gradient-guided image inpainting","authors":"Wuzhen Shi , Wu Yang , Zhihao Wu , Yang Wen","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104162","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104162","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Existing prior-guided image inpainting methods show state-of-the-art performance. But their prior extraction is computationally expensive and unstable in accuracy. Besides, most of them only focus on the structure guidance, which hardly facilitates the repair of realistic textures. Inspired by the fact that gradient maps are easy to extract and reflect both image structure and fine texture details, this paper proposes a gradient-guided network for image inpainting, which first uses the gradient context information and multi-level image compensation features to repair the gradient, and then uses the repaired gradient features to guide the generation of realistic image. A gradient-driven attention (GDA) module is introduced for efficient prior guidance. Additionally, a context validity-aware (CVA) module is proposed for progressively filling hole regions of images, which accurately utilizes both local and contextual information for image inpainting via validity-aware measurements. Furthermore, by artificially manipulating the generation of the gradient map, our gradient-guided image inpainting method enables user-guided image editing, which effectively increases the diversity of image generation and enhances the flexibility of image editing. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. Extensive ablation experiments are also conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of each module.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"131 ","pages":"Article 104162"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146000897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-18DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104124
Gabriel Oduori , Chaira Cocco , Payam Sajadi , Francesco Pilla
Data fusion (DF) addresses the challenge of integrating heterogeneous data sources to improve decision-making and inference. Although DF has been widely explored, no prior systematic review has specifically focused on its application to low-cost sensor (LCS) data in environmental monitoring. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) following the PRISMA framework, synthesising findings from 82 peer-reviewed articles. The review addresses three key questions: (1) What fusion methodologies are employed in conjunction with LCS data? (2) In what environmental contexts are these methods applied? (3) What are the methodological challenges and research gaps? Our analysis reveals that geostatistical and machine learning approaches dominate current practice, with air quality monitoring emerging as the primary application domain. Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods are increasingly used to integrate spatial, temporal, and multimodal data. However, limitations persist in uncertainty quantification, validation standards, and the generalisability of fusion frameworks. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of current techniques and outlines key directions for future research, including the development of robust, uncertainty-aware fusion methods and broader application to less-studied environmental variables.
{"title":"Data fusion for low-cost sensors: A systematic literature review","authors":"Gabriel Oduori , Chaira Cocco , Payam Sajadi , Francesco Pilla","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104124","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104124","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Data fusion (DF) addresses the challenge of integrating heterogeneous data sources to improve decision-making and inference. Although DF has been widely explored, no prior systematic review has specifically focused on its application to low-cost sensor (LCS) data in environmental monitoring. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) following the PRISMA framework, synthesising findings from 82 peer-reviewed articles. The review addresses three key questions: (1) What fusion methodologies are employed in conjunction with LCS data? (2) In what environmental contexts are these methods applied? (3) What are the methodological challenges and research gaps? Our analysis reveals that geostatistical and machine learning approaches dominate current practice, with air quality monitoring emerging as the primary application domain. Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods are increasingly used to integrate spatial, temporal, and multimodal data. However, limitations persist in uncertainty quantification, validation standards, and the generalisability of fusion frameworks. This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of current techniques and outlines key directions for future research, including the development of robust, uncertainty-aware fusion methods and broader application to less-studied environmental variables.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"131 ","pages":"Article 104124"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145995206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-18DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104161
Adil Chakhtouna, Sara Sekkate, Abdellah Adib
Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) is a rapidly evolving research field that aims to enable machines to automatically identify human emotions from vocal signals. This systematic review presents a comprehensive and structured synthesis of the SER literature, focusing on eleven key research questions that span the theoretical foundations, signal processing pipeline, and methodological advancements in the field. Unlike prior surveys, this review unifies both foundational and state-of-the-art insights across all stages of the SER pipeline through a question-driven structure, offering a clear road-map for both new and experienced researchers in the SER community. We first explore the psychological and computational modeling of emotions, followed by a detailed examination of the different modalities for emotion expression, with a particular emphasis on speech. The review highlights the most widely used emotional speech databases, common pre-processing techniques, and the diverse set of handcrafted and learned features employed in SER. We compare traditional machine learning approaches with recent deep learning models, emphasizing their respective strengths, limitations, and application contexts. Special attention is given to the recent shift toward self-supervised learning (SSL) models such as Wav2Vec2 and HuBERT, which have redefined the state-of-the-art in speech-based representation learning. Special attention is given to evaluation metrics, benchmarking strategies, and real-world deployment challenges, including issues of speaker-independence and environmental variability. The review concludes by identifying key limitations across the literature and articulating future research directions necessary for developing reliable, scalable, and context-aware emotion-aware systems. Overall, this work serves as a central reference for advancing SER research and practical deployment in real-world environments.
{"title":"Speech emotion recognition: A systematic mega-review of techniques and pipelines","authors":"Adil Chakhtouna, Sara Sekkate, Abdellah Adib","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104161","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104161","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) is a rapidly evolving research field that aims to enable machines to automatically identify human emotions from vocal signals. This systematic review presents a comprehensive and structured synthesis of the SER literature, focusing on eleven key research questions that span the theoretical foundations, signal processing pipeline, and methodological advancements in the field. Unlike prior surveys, this review unifies both foundational and state-of-the-art insights across all stages of the SER pipeline through a question-driven structure, offering a clear road-map for both new and experienced researchers in the SER community. We first explore the psychological and computational modeling of emotions, followed by a detailed examination of the different modalities for emotion expression, with a particular emphasis on speech. The review highlights the most widely used emotional speech databases, common pre-processing techniques, and the diverse set of handcrafted and learned features employed in SER. We compare traditional machine learning approaches with recent deep learning models, emphasizing their respective strengths, limitations, and application contexts. Special attention is given to the recent shift toward self-supervised learning (SSL) models such as Wav2Vec2 and HuBERT, which have redefined the state-of-the-art in speech-based representation learning. Special attention is given to evaluation metrics, benchmarking strategies, and real-world deployment challenges, including issues of speaker-independence and environmental variability. The review concludes by identifying key limitations across the literature and articulating future research directions necessary for developing reliable, scalable, and context-aware emotion-aware systems. Overall, this work serves as a central reference for advancing SER research and practical deployment in real-world environments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"131 ","pages":"Article 104161"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145995202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-17DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104157
Xunqi Zhou , Zhenqi Zhang , Zifeng Wu , Qianming Wang , Jing Teng , Jinlong Liu , Yongjie Zhai
In intelligent vehicle damage assessment, component recognition faces challenges such as significant intra-class variability and minimal inter-class differences, which hinder detection, as well as occlusions and ambiguous boundaries, which complicate segmentation. We generalize these problems into three core aspects: inter-object relational modeling, semantic-detail information balancing, and occlusion-aware decoupling. To this end, we propose the Adaptive Regularized Topological Segmentation (ARTSeg) network, comprising three complementary modules: Inter-Class Graph Constraint (ICGC), Constrained Detail Feature Backtracking (CDFB), and Topological Decoupling Segmentation (TDS). Each module is purposefully designed, integrated in a progressive structure, and synergistically reinforces the others to enhance overall performance. Specifically, ICGC clusters intra-class features and establishes implicit topological constraints among categories during feature extraction, enabling the model to better capture inter-class relationships and improve detection representation. Subsequently, CDFB evaluates the impact of channel-wise feature information within each candidate region on segmentation accuracy and computational cost, dynamically selecting appropriate feature resolutions for individual instances while balancing the demands of detection and segmentation tasks. Finally, TDS introduces topological associations between occluded and occluding regions at the feature level and decouples them at the task level, explicitly modeling generalized occlusion regions and enhancing segmentation performance. We quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate ARTSeg on a 59-category vehicle component dataset constructed for insurance damage assessment, achieving notable improvements in addressing the aforementioned problems. Experiments on two public datasets, DSMLR and Carparts, further validate the generalization capability of the proposed method. Results indicate that ARTSeg provides practical guidance for component recognition in intelligent vehicle damage assessment.
{"title":"An adaptive regularized topological segmentation network integrating inter-class relations and occlusion information for vehicle component recognition","authors":"Xunqi Zhou , Zhenqi Zhang , Zifeng Wu , Qianming Wang , Jing Teng , Jinlong Liu , Yongjie Zhai","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104157","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104157","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In intelligent vehicle damage assessment, component recognition faces challenges such as significant intra-class variability and minimal inter-class differences, which hinder detection, as well as occlusions and ambiguous boundaries, which complicate segmentation. We generalize these problems into three core aspects: inter-object relational modeling, semantic-detail information balancing, and occlusion-aware decoupling. To this end, we propose the Adaptive Regularized Topological Segmentation (ARTSeg) network, comprising three complementary modules: Inter-Class Graph Constraint (ICGC), Constrained Detail Feature Backtracking (CDFB), and Topological Decoupling Segmentation (TDS). Each module is purposefully designed, integrated in a progressive structure, and synergistically reinforces the others to enhance overall performance. Specifically, ICGC clusters intra-class features and establishes implicit topological constraints among categories during feature extraction, enabling the model to better capture inter-class relationships and improve detection representation. Subsequently, CDFB evaluates the impact of channel-wise feature information within each candidate region on segmentation accuracy and computational cost, dynamically selecting appropriate feature resolutions for individual instances while balancing the demands of detection and segmentation tasks. Finally, TDS introduces topological associations between occluded and occluding regions at the feature level and decouples them at the task level, explicitly modeling generalized occlusion regions and enhancing segmentation performance. We quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate ARTSeg on a 59-category vehicle component dataset constructed for insurance damage assessment, achieving notable improvements in addressing the aforementioned problems. Experiments on two public datasets, DSMLR and Carparts, further validate the generalization capability of the proposed method. Results indicate that ARTSeg provides practical guidance for component recognition in intelligent vehicle damage assessment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"131 ","pages":"Article 104157"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145995203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-17DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104160
Minghan Li , Ercong Nie , Huiping Huang , Xinxuan Lv , Guodong Zhou
Large Language Models (LLMs) show strong potential for query expansion (QE), but their effectiveness is highly sensitive to prompt design. This paper investigates whether exploiting the system-user prompt distinction in chat-based LLMs improves QE, and how multiple expansions should be combined. We propose Dual-Layer Prompt Ensembles, which pair a behavioural system prompt with varied user prompts to generate diverse expansions, and aggregate their BM25-ranked lists using lightweight SU-RankFusion schemes. Experiments on six heterogeneous datasets show that dual-layer prompting consistently outperforms strong single-prompt baselines. For example, on Touche-2020 a dual-layer configuration improves nDCG@10 from 0.4177 (QE-CoT) to 0.4696, and SU-RankFusion further raises it to 0.4797. On Robust04 and DBPedia, SU-RankFusion improves nDCG@10 over BM25 by 24.7% and 25.5%, respectively, with similar gains on NFCorpus, FiQA, and TREC-COVID. These results demonstrate that system-user prompt ensembles are effective for QE, and that simple fusion transforms prompt-level diversity into stable retrieval improvements.
{"title":"Dual-layer prompt ensembles: Leveraging system- and user-level instructions for robust LLM-based query expansion and rank fusion","authors":"Minghan Li , Ercong Nie , Huiping Huang , Xinxuan Lv , Guodong Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104160","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104160","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Large Language Models (LLMs) show strong potential for query expansion (QE), but their effectiveness is highly sensitive to prompt design. This paper investigates whether exploiting the system-user prompt distinction in chat-based LLMs improves QE, and how multiple expansions should be combined. We propose Dual-Layer Prompt Ensembles, which pair a behavioural system prompt with varied user prompts to generate diverse expansions, and aggregate their BM25-ranked lists using lightweight SU-RankFusion schemes. Experiments on six heterogeneous datasets show that dual-layer prompting consistently outperforms strong single-prompt baselines. For example, on Touche-2020 a dual-layer configuration improves nDCG@10 from 0.4177 (QE-CoT) to 0.4696, and SU-RankFusion further raises it to 0.4797. On Robust04 and DBPedia, SU-RankFusion improves nDCG@10 over BM25 by 24.7% and 25.5%, respectively, with similar gains on NFCorpus, FiQA, and TREC-COVID. These results demonstrate that system-user prompt ensembles are effective for QE, and that simple fusion transforms prompt-level diversity into stable retrieval improvements.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"131 ","pages":"Article 104160"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145995213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-17DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104152
Juan Carlos González-Quesada , Ignacio Javier Pérez , Enrique Herrera-Viedma , Francisco Javier Cabrerizo
Granular computing is a framework encompassing tools, techniques, and theories that utilize information granules to address complex problems. Recently, it has become a popular area of study for managing uncertainty in group decision-making. Numerous models using granular computing have been developed to tackle issues such as incomplete information, consistency, and consensus in fuzzy group decision-making. However, existing granular-based approaches fail to consider two critical factors in managing consensus: (i) the individual’s willingness to engage and (ii) the necessity of mitigating bias in interpersonal interactions. To address these gaps, we propose a new granular consensus-reaching process inspired by the blockchain technology, which helps create trust among participants. Unlike most previous methods, our approach minimizes biased interactions among participants by using a communication structure based on blockchain and smart contracts. In this setup, participants’ identities, opinions, and decisions regarding the acceptance or rejection of received recommendations remain private from other peers. Additionally, our approach includes a trust-building mechanism, also based on blockchain, encouraging individuals to rethink and adjust their opinions. It differs from most previous trust-building methods by removing the requirement of opinion similarity and avoiding trust propagation. Instead, it builds trust among participants by allowing them to see how many peers have accepted suggested modifications. This enhances computational efficiency in creating trust and speeds up consensus. To demonstrate how effective our approach is, we provide a numerical example, along with a sensitivity analysis of its key assumptions and a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. The results confirm that this new granular consensus-reaching process is valid, effective, and practical.
{"title":"A granular consensus-reaching process using blockchain-based mechanisms to foster trust relationships in fuzzy group decision-making","authors":"Juan Carlos González-Quesada , Ignacio Javier Pérez , Enrique Herrera-Viedma , Francisco Javier Cabrerizo","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104152","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104152","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Granular computing is a framework encompassing tools, techniques, and theories that utilize information granules to address complex problems. Recently, it has become a popular area of study for managing uncertainty in group decision-making. Numerous models using granular computing have been developed to tackle issues such as incomplete information, consistency, and consensus in fuzzy group decision-making. However, existing granular-based approaches fail to consider two critical factors in managing consensus: (i) the individual’s willingness to engage and (ii) the necessity of mitigating bias in interpersonal interactions. To address these gaps, we propose a new granular consensus-reaching process inspired by the blockchain technology, which helps create trust among participants. Unlike most previous methods, our approach minimizes biased interactions among participants by using a communication structure based on blockchain and smart contracts. In this setup, participants’ identities, opinions, and decisions regarding the acceptance or rejection of received recommendations remain private from other peers. Additionally, our approach includes a trust-building mechanism, also based on blockchain, encouraging individuals to rethink and adjust their opinions. It differs from most previous trust-building methods by removing the requirement of opinion similarity and avoiding trust propagation. Instead, it builds trust among participants by allowing them to see how many peers have accepted suggested modifications. This enhances computational efficiency in creating trust and speeds up consensus. To demonstrate how effective our approach is, we provide a numerical example, along with a sensitivity analysis of its key assumptions and a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. The results confirm that this new granular consensus-reaching process is valid, effective, and practical.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"130 ","pages":"Article 104152"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145995204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-16DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104154
Xin Qi , Tao Xu , Chengrun Dang , Zhuang Qi , Lei Meng , Han Yu
Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and deep learning models, is increasingly transforming oncology by providing powerful tools to analyze complex multidimensional data. However, developing reliable and generalizable models requires large-scale training datasets, which are often constrained by privacy regulations and the decentralized nature of medical data across institutions. Federated learning has recently emerged as a promising approach that enables collaborative model training across multiple sites without sharing raw data. This survey presents the fundamental principles and architectural frameworks of federated learning, highlighting its strengths in protecting data privacy, improving model robustness, and facilitating the integration of multi-omics and multi-modal datasets. Key applications in cancer detection, prognosis prediction, and treatment response prediction are discussed, underscoring its potential to support clinical decision-making. Moreover, the survey highlights major challenges in applying federated learning to oncology and outlines key directions to advance precision medicine, including the integration of multi-modal data, foundation models, causal reasoning, and continual learning. With ongoing technological advancements, federated learning holds great promise to bridge AI innovation and privacy protection in oncology.
{"title":"Federated learning in oncology: Bridging artificial intelligence innovation and privacy protection","authors":"Xin Qi , Tao Xu , Chengrun Dang , Zhuang Qi , Lei Meng , Han Yu","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104154","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104154","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning and deep learning models, is increasingly transforming oncology by providing powerful tools to analyze complex multidimensional data. However, developing reliable and generalizable models requires large-scale training datasets, which are often constrained by privacy regulations and the decentralized nature of medical data across institutions. Federated learning has recently emerged as a promising approach that enables collaborative model training across multiple sites without sharing raw data. This survey presents the fundamental principles and architectural frameworks of federated learning, highlighting its strengths in protecting data privacy, improving model robustness, and facilitating the integration of multi-omics and multi-modal datasets. Key applications in cancer detection, prognosis prediction, and treatment response prediction are discussed, underscoring its potential to support clinical decision-making. Moreover, the survey highlights major challenges in applying federated learning to oncology and outlines key directions to advance precision medicine, including the integration of multi-modal data, foundation models, causal reasoning, and continual learning. With ongoing technological advancements, federated learning holds great promise to bridge AI innovation and privacy protection in oncology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"130 ","pages":"Article 104154"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145995214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-16DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104155
Daniel M. Jimenez-Gutierrez , Yelizaveta Falkouskaya , José L. Hernandez-Ramos , Aris Anagnostopoulos , Ioannis Chatzigiannakis , Andrea Vitaletti
Federated Learning (FL) is an emerging distributed machine learning paradigm enabling multiple clients to train a global model collaboratively without sharing their raw data. While FL enhances data privacy by design, it remains vulnerable to various security and privacy threats. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of 203 papers regarding the state-of-the-art attacks and defense mechanisms developed to address these challenges, categorizing them into security-enhancing and privacy-preserving techniques. Security-enhancing methods aim to improve FL robustness against malicious behaviors such as byzantine attacks, poisoning, and Sybil attacks. At the same time, privacy-preserving techniques focus on protecting sensitive data through cryptographic approaches, differential privacy, and secure aggregation. We critically analyze the strengths and limitations of existing methods, highlight the trade-offs between privacy, security, and model performance, and discuss the implications of non-IID data distributions on the effectiveness of these defenses. Furthermore, we identify open research challenges and future directions, including the need for scalable, adaptive, and energy-efficient solutions operating in dynamic and heterogeneous FL environments. Our survey aims to guide researchers and practitioners in developing robust and privacy-preserving FL systems, fostering advancements safeguarding collaborative learning frameworks’ integrity and confidentiality.
{"title":"On the security and privacy of federated learning: A survey with attacks, defenses, frameworks, applications, and future directions","authors":"Daniel M. Jimenez-Gutierrez , Yelizaveta Falkouskaya , José L. Hernandez-Ramos , Aris Anagnostopoulos , Ioannis Chatzigiannakis , Andrea Vitaletti","doi":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104155","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104155","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Federated Learning (FL) is an emerging distributed machine learning paradigm enabling multiple clients to train a global model collaboratively without sharing their raw data. While FL enhances data privacy by design, it remains vulnerable to various security and privacy threats. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of 203 papers regarding the state-of-the-art attacks and defense mechanisms developed to address these challenges, categorizing them into security-enhancing and privacy-preserving techniques. Security-enhancing methods aim to improve FL robustness against malicious behaviors such as byzantine attacks, poisoning, and Sybil attacks. At the same time, privacy-preserving techniques focus on protecting sensitive data through cryptographic approaches, differential privacy, and secure aggregation. We critically analyze the strengths and limitations of existing methods, highlight the trade-offs between privacy, security, and model performance, and discuss the implications of non-IID data distributions on the effectiveness of these defenses. Furthermore, we identify open research challenges and future directions, including the need for scalable, adaptive, and energy-efficient solutions operating in dynamic and heterogeneous FL environments. Our survey aims to guide researchers and practitioners in developing robust and privacy-preserving FL systems, fostering advancements safeguarding collaborative learning frameworks’ integrity and confidentiality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50367,"journal":{"name":"Information Fusion","volume":"131 ","pages":"Article 104155"},"PeriodicalIF":15.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145995205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-16DOI: 10.1016/j.inffus.2026.104153
Huaxiang Liu , Wei Sun , Youyao Fu , Shiqing Zhang , Jie Jin , Jiangxiong Fang , Binliang Wang
Accurate liver segmentation in computed tomography (CT) scans is crucial for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma and surgical planning; however, manual delineation is laborious and prone to operator variability. Existing deep learning methods frequently sacrifice precise boundary delineation when expanding receptive fields or fail to leverage frequency-domain cues that encode global shape, while conventional attention mechanisms are less effective in processing low-contrast images. To address these challenges, we introduce LWT-Net, a novel network guided by a trainable lifting wavelet transform, incorporating a frequency-split histogram attention mechanism to enhance liver segmentation. LWT-Net incorporates a trainable lifting wavelet transform within an encoder-decoder framework to hierarchically decompose features into low-frequency components that capture global structure and high-frequency bands that preserve edge and texture details. A complementary inverse lifting stage reconstructs high-resolution features while maintaining spatial consistency. The frequency-spatial fusion module, driven by a histogram-based attention mechanism, performs histogram-guided feature reorganization across global and local bins, while employing self-attention to capture long-range dependencies and prioritize anatomically significant regions. Comprehensive evaluations on the LiTS2017, WORD, and FLARE22 datasets confirm LWT-Net’s superior performance, achieving mean Dice similarity coefficients of 95.96%, 97.15%, and 95.97%.
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