Fractal Approximate Nearest Neighbour Search in Log-Log Time

The great advances in deep learning enable human beings to extract the semantic information in ubiquitous unstructured data into high-dimensional vectors, leading to an urgent priority of managing vector data. Nearest neighbor (NN) query is a pivotal question in vector data management. Unfortunately, the NN query has been proved to be intrinsically hard. Researchers, thus, turn to approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) query which targets better efficiency by slightly compromising accuracy. Despite this, existing ANN methods still incur high time and space costs, which are mainly due to the high dimensionality. Specifically, in most in-memory ANN algorithms, the time cost is dominated by the time for comparing the distances among vectors. Each distance comparison operation (DCO) involves hundreds of arithmetic operations as each vector has hundreds of dimensions. Similarly, the space cost is dominated by the space for storing the vectors. Towards the goal of reducing the time and space costs, we present three methods in this thesis. First, we observe that, for a DCO, if an approximate distance can confirm that a vector is not a NN, then it can be discarded without computing exact distances. Based on this observation, we propose a method named ADSampling. For a DCO, it iteratively and incrementally samples a few dimensions and computes an approximate distance. When this distance is accurate enough to decide the result of the DCO, it terminates sampling. Second, to further improve the efficiency of DCOs, we design an efficient distance estimator. We propose a new quantization method named RaBitQ, which maps $D$-dimensional vectors into $D$-bit strings. RaBitQ provides an unbiased and asymptotically optimal estimator with good empirical accuracy. In addition, we introduce efficient implementations of RaBitQ based on bitwise operations or SIMD-based operations. Third, by extending the RaBitQ method, we develop an algorithm which compresses a floating-point vector into a $B$-bit unsigned integer vector. We prove that our algorithm is asymptotically optimal in terms of the space-accuracy trade-off.

Case Based Reasoning (CBR) is a method that aims to resolve a new case by adapting the solutions contained in previous cases that are similar to the new case. The system built in this study is the CBR system to make recommendations on the topic of student thesis concentration. This study used data from undergraduate students of Informatics Engineering IST AKPRIND Yogyakarta with a total of 115 data consisting of 80 training data and 35 test data. This study aims to design and build a Case Based Reasoning system using the Nearest Neighbor and Manhattan Distance Similarity Methods, and to compare the results of the accuracy value using the Nearest Neighbor Similarity and Manhattan Distance Similarity methods. The recommendation process is carried out by calculating the value of closeness or similarity between new cases and old cases stored on a case basis using the Nearest Neighbor Method and Manhattan Distance. The features used in this study consisted of GPA and course grades. The case taken is the case with the highest similarity value. If a case doesnt get a topic recommendation or is less than the trashold value of 0.8, a case revision will be carried out by an expert. Successfully revised cases are stored in the system to be made new knowledge. The test results using the Nearest Neighbor Method get an accuracy value of 97.14% and Manhattan Distance Method 94.29%.

A range nearest-neighbor (RNN) query retrieves the nearest neighbor (NN) for every point in a range. It is a natural generalization of point and continuous nearest-neighbor queries and has many applications. In this paper, we consider the ranges as (hyper)rectangles and propose efficient in-memory processing and secondary memory pruning techniques for RNN queries in both 2D and high-dimensional spaces. These techniques are generalized for kRNN queries, which return the k nearest neighbors for every point in the range. In addition, we devise an auxiliary solution-based index EXO-tree to speed up any type of NN query. EXO-tree is orthogonal to any existing NN processing algorithm and, thus, can be transparently integrated. An extensive empirical study was conducted to evaluate the CPU and I/O performance of these techniques, and the study showed that they are efficient and robust under various data sets, query ranges, numbers of nearest neighbors, dimensions, and cache sizes.

Object recognition is a challenging task in image processing and computer vision. This paper proposes a clustering-based image segmentation approach for elephant recognition. An appreciable recognition rate was achieved by k-means clustering technique followed by feature extraction and K nearest neighbour K-NN classifier. The k-means clustering algorithm employs the concept of fitness and belongingness to provide a more adaptive and better clustering process as compared to several conventional algorithms. Elephant shape features are extracted for the recognition. The recognition rate for each class is calculated for performance evaluation. The recognition rate for different K values in K-NN classifier is calculated to find a proper K value for the proposed design.

Spatial interpolations are commonly used in geometric modeling for life science applications. In large-scale spatial interpolations, it is always needed to find a local set of data points for each interpolated point using the k Nearest Neighbor (kNN) search procedure. To improve the computational efficiency of kNN search, spatial decomposition structures such as grids and trees are employed to fastly locate the nearest neighbors. Among those spatial decomposition structures, the uniform grid is the simplest one, and the size of the grid cell could strongly affect the efficiency of kNN search. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of the size of uniform grid cell on the efficiency of kNN search. Our objective is to find the relatively optimal size of grid cell by considering the distribution of scattered points (i.e., the data points and the interpolated points). We employ the Standard Deviation of points’ coordinates to measure the spatial distribution of scattered points. For the irregularly distributed scattered points, we perform several series of kNN search procedures in two dimensions. Benchmark results indicate that: in two dimensions, with the increase of the Standard Deviation of points’ coordinates, the relatively optimal size of the grid cell decreases and eventually converges. The relationships between the Standard Deviation of scattered points’ coordinates and the relatively optimal size of grid cell are also fitted. The fitted relationships could be applied to determine the relatively optimal grid cell in kNN search, and further, improve the computational efficiency of spatial interpolations.

Nearest neighbor search, a classic way of identifying similar data, can be applied to various areas, including database, machine learning, natural language processing, software engineering, etc. Secure nearest neighbor search aims to find nearest neighbors to a given query point over encrypted data without accessing data in plaintext. It provides privacy protection to datasets when nearest neighbor queries need to be operated by an untrusted party (e.g., a public server). While different solutions have been proposed to support nearest neighbor queries on encrypted data, these existing solutions still encounter critical drawbacks either in efficiency or privacy. In light of the limitations in the current literature, we propose a novel approximate nearest neighbor search solution, referred to as Sparser, by leveraging a combination of space-filling curves, perturbation, and Order-Preserving Encryption. The advantages of Sparser are twofold, strengthening privacy and improving efficiency. Specifically, Sparser pre-processes plaintext data with space-filling curves and perturbation, such that data is sparse, which mitigates leakage abuse attacks and renders stronger privacy. In addition to privacy enhancement, Sparser can efficiently find approximate nearest neighbors over encrypted data with logarithmic time. Through extensive experiments over real-world datasets, we demonstrate that Sparser can achieve strong privacy protection under leakage abuse attacks and minimize search time.

Here we report PPB2 as a target prediction tool assigning targets to a query molecule based on ChEMBL data. PPB2 computes ligand similarities using molecular fingerprints encoding composition (MQN), molecular shape and pharmacophores (Xfp), and substructures (ECfp4) and features an unprecedented combination of nearest neighbor (NN) searches and Naı̈ve Bayes (NB) machine learning, together with simple NN searches, NB and Deep Neural Network (DNN) machine learning models as further options. Although NN(ECfp4) gives the best results in terms of recall in a 10-fold cross-validation study, combining NN searches with NB machine learning provides superior precision statistics, as well as better results in a case study predicting off-targets of a recently reported TRPV6 calcium channel inhibitor, illustrating the value of this combined approach. PPB2 is available to assess possible off-targets of small molecule drug-like compounds by public access at http://gdb.unibe.ch .

Nearest neighbor (NN) searches represent an important class of queries in geographic information systems (GIS). Most nearest neighbor algorithms rely on static distance information to compute NN queries (e.g., Euclidean distance or spatial network distance). However, the final goal of a user when performing an NN search is often to travel to one of the points of the search result. In this case, finding the nearest neighbors in terms of travel time is more important than the actual distance. In the existing NN algorithms dynamic real-time events (e.g., traffic congestions, detours, etc.) are usually not considered and hence the pre-computed nearest neighbor objects may not accurately reflect the shortest travel time. In this paper we propose a novel travel time network that integrates both spatial networks and real-time traffic event information. Based on this foundation of the travel time network, we develop a local-based greedy nearest neighbor algorithm and a global-based adaptive nearest neighbor algorithm that both utilize real-time traffic information to provide adaptive nearest neighbor search results. We have performed a theoretical analysis and simulations to verify our methods. The results indicate that our algorithms remarkably reduce the travel time compared with previous nearest neighbor solutions.

We suggest a simple modification to the Kd-tree search algorithm for nearest neighbor search resulting in an improved performance. The Kd-tree data structure seems to work well in finding nearest neighbors in low dimensions but its performance degrades even if the number of dimensions increases to more than two. Since the exact nearest neighbor search problem suffers from the curse of dimensionality we focus on approximate solutions; a c-approximate nearest neighbor is any neighbor within distance at most c times the distance to the nearest neighbor. We show that for a randomly constructed database of points if the query point is chosen close to one of the points in the data base, the traditional Kd-tree search algorithm has a very low probability of finding an approximate nearest neighbor; the probability of success drops exponentially in the number of dimensions d as e − Ω(d/c). However, a simple change to the search algorithm results in a much higher chance of success. Instead of searching for the query point in the Kd-tree we search for a random set of points in the neighborhood of the query point. It turns out that searching for e Ω(d/c) such points can find the c-approximate nearest neighbor with a much higher chance of success.KeywordsSuccess ProbabilityRandom PointNeighbor SearchComputational GeometryQuery PointThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

In this paper, we study the problem of continuous monitoring of reverse k nearest neighbors queries in Euclidean space as well as in spatial networks. Existing techniques are sensitive toward objects and queries movement. For example, the results of a query are to be recomputed whenever the query changes its location. We present a framework for continuous reverse k nearest neighbor (RkNN) queries by assigning each object and query with a safe region such that the expensive recomputation is not required as long as the query and objects remain in their respective safe regions. This significantly improves the computation cost. As a byproduct, our framework also reduces the communication cost in client---server architectures because an object does not report its location to the server unless it leaves its safe region or the server sends a location update request. We also conduct a rigid cost analysis for our Euclidean space RkNN algorithm. We show that our techniques can also be applied to answer bichromatic RkNN queries in Euclidean space as well as in spatial networks. Furthermore, we show that our techniques can be extended for the spatial networks that are represented by directed graphs. The extensive experiments demonstrate that our techniques outperform the existing techniques by an order of magnitude in terms of computation cost and communication cost.

Nearest neighbor search is a fundamental problem in computer vision and machine learning. The straightforward solution, linear scan, is both computationally and memory intensive in large scale high-dimensional cases, hence is not preferable in practice. Therefore, there have been a lot of interests in algorithms that perform approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search. In this paper, we propose a novel addition-based vector quantization algorithm, Asymmetric Mapping Quantization (AMQ), to efficiently conduct ANN search. Unlike existing addition-based quantization methods that suffer from handling the problem caused by the norm of database vector, we map the query vector and database vector using different mapping functions to transform the computation of L-2 distance to inner product similarity, thus do not need to evaluate the norm of database vector. Moreover, we further propose Distributed Asymmetric Mapping Quantization (DAMQ) to enable AMQ to work on very large dataset by distributed learning. Extensive experiments on approximate nearest neighbor search and image retrieval validate the merits of the proposed AMQ and DAMQ.

Broadcasting data with an index is an effective way to disseminate public information to a large clients. For a server, using multiple channels to provide services (e.g., location-based services) makes the broadcast cycle shorter than using one channel. Among location-based services, the k nearest neighbors (k-NN) search is an important one and finds the fc closest objects to a query point in a multi-dimensional space. This paper considers k nearest neighbors search on a broadcast R-tree in a multi-channel environment. We assume that a mobile client can only tune into a specified channel at one time instance. We study how a server generates the broadcast schedules on multiple channels and explore how a client executes the k-NN search on the broadcast. Different broadcast schedules with the client k-NN search processing makes different k-NN search protocols. The objectives of the protocols is to minimize the latency (i.e., the time elapsed between issuing and termination of the query), tuning time (i.e., the amount of time spent on listening to the channel), and the memory usage for k-NN search processing. Last, we present our experiments and the experiment results validate that our mechanisms achieve the objectives.

Developed from Nearest Neighbor (NN) queries, Aggregate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) queries return the object that minimizes an aggregate distance function with respect to a set of query points. Because of the multiple query points, ANN queries are much more complex than NN queries. For optimizing the query processing and improving the query efficiency, many ANN queries algorithms utilizes pruning strategies, with or without an index structure. Obviously, the pruning effect highly depends on the tightness of the bound estimation. In this paper, we figure out a property in vector space and develop some efficient bound estimations for two most popular types of ANN queries. Based on these bounds, we design the indexed and non-index ANN algorithms, and conduct experimental studies. Our algorithms show good performance, especially for high dimensional queries, for both real dataset and synthetic datasets.

Currently, Nearest-Neighbor approaches (NN) have been widely applied to real world image data mining. These approaches have the following three disadvantages: (i) the performance is inferior on small datasets; (ii) the performance of approximated nearest neighbor search will degrade for data with high dimensions; (iii) they are heavily dependent on the chosen feature and distance measure. To overcome these intrinsic weaknesses, we propose a novel Nearest-Neighbor method, which improves the original NN approaches from three aspects. Firstly, we propose a novel neighborhood similarity measure, where the similarity between test images and labeled images in the database is calculated jointly by the original image-to-image similarity and the average similarity of their neighboring unlabeled data. Secondly, we adopt the kernelized locality sensitive hashing to effectively conduct the nearest neighbor search for high dimensional data. Finally, to enhance the robustness of the method on different genres of images, we propose to fuse the discrimination power of different features by considering all the retrieved nearest neighbors via hashing systems using different features/kernels. Experimental result shows the advantage over traditional Nearest-Neighbor methods using the labeled data only. Even when the ratio of labeled data is very small, our method could also achieve remarkable results, thanks to the help of unlabeled data and multiple features.

Nearest-neighbor search, which returns the nearest neighbor of a query point in a set of points, is an important and widely studied problem in many fields, and it has wide range of applications. In many of them, such as sensor databases, location-based services, face recognition, and mobile data, the location of data is imprecise. We therefore study nearest-neighbor queries in a probabilistic framework in which the location of each input point is specified as a probability distribution function. We present efficient algorithms for - computing all points that are nearest neighbors of a query point with nonzero probability; and - estimating the probability of a point being the nearest neighbor of a query point, either exactly or within a specified additive error.