Detect signal jumps relative to local activity - matlab

In Matlab, is it possible to measure local variation of a signal across an entire signal without using for loops? I.e., can I implement the following:
window_length = <something>
for n = 1:(length_of_signal - window_length/2)
global_variance(n) = var(my_signal(1:window_length))
end
in a vectorized format?

If you have the image processing toolbox, you can use STDFILT:
global_std = stdfilt(my_signal(:),ones(window_length,1));
% square to get the variance
global_variance = global_std.^2;

You could create a 2D array where each row is shifted one w.r.t. to the row above, and with the number of rows equal to the window width; then computing the variance is trivial. This doesn't require any toolboxes. Not sure if it's much faster than the for loop though:
longSignal = repmat(mySignal(:), [1 window_length+1]);
longSignal = reshape(longSignal(1:((length_of_signal+1)*window_length)), [length_of_signal+1, window_length])';
global_variance = sum(longSignal.*longSignal, 2);
global_variance = global_variance(1:length_of_signal-window_length));
Note that the second column is shifted down by one relative to the one above - this means that when we have the blocks of data on which we want to operate in rows, so I take the transpose. After that, the sum operator will sum over the first dimension, which gives you a row vector with the results you want. However, there is a bit of wrapping of data going on, so we have to limit to the number of "good" values.
I don't have matlab handy right now (I'm at home), so I was unable to test the above - but I think the general idea should work. It's vectorized - I can't guarantee it's fast...

Check the "moving window standard deviation" function at Matlab Central. Your code would be:
movingstd(my_signal, window_length, 'forward').^2
There's also moving variance code, but it seems to be broken.
The idea is to use filter function.

Related

Matlab vectorization of multiple embedded for loops

Suppose you have 5 vectors: v_1, v_2, v_3, v_4 and v_5. These vectors each contain a range of values from a minimum to a maximum. So for example:
v_1 = minimum_value:step:maximum_value;
Each of these vectors uses the same step size but has a different minimum and maximum value. Thus they are each of a different length.
A function F(v_1, v_2, v_3, v_4, v_5) is dependant on these vectors and can use any combination of the elements within them. (Apologies for the poor explanation). I am trying to find the maximum value of F and record the values which resulted in it. My current approach has been to use multiple embedded for loops as shown to work out the function for every combination of the vectors elements:
% Set the temp value to a small value
temp = 0;
% For every combination of the five vectors use the equation. If the result
% is greater than the one calculated previously, store it along with the values
% (postitions) of elements within the vectors
for a=1:length(v_1)
for b=1:length(v_2)
for c=1:length(v_3)
for d=1:length(v_4)
for e=1:length(v_5)
% The function is a combination of trigonometrics, summations,
% multiplications etc..
Result = F(v_1(a), v_2(b), v_3(c), v_4(d), v_5(e))
% If the value of Result is greater that the previous value,
% store it and record the values of 'a','b','c','d' and 'e'
if Result > temp;
temp = Result;
f = a;
g = b;
h = c;
i = d;
j = e;
end
end
end
end
end
end
This gets incredibly slow, for small step sizes. If there are around 100 elements in each vector the number of combinations is around 100*100*100*100*100. This is a problem as I need small step values to get a suitably converged answer.
I was wondering if it was possible to speed this up using Vectorization, or any other method. I was also looking at generating the combinations prior to the calculation but this seemed even slower than my current method. I haven't used Matlab for a long time but just looking at the number of embedded for loops makes me think that this can definitely be sped up. Thank you for the suggestions.
No matter how you generate your parameter combination, you will end up calling your function F 100^5 times. The easiest solution would be to use parfor instead in order to exploit multi-core calculation. If you do that, you should store the calculation results and find the maximum after the loop, because your current approach would not be thread-safe.
Having said that and not knowing anything about your actual problem, I would advise you to implement a more structured approach, like first finding a coarse solution with a bigger step size and narrowing it down successivley by reducing the min/max values of your parameter intervals. What you have currently is the absolute brute-force method which will never be very effective.

Finding the difference between columns in matrix without loops

I have the results from an iterative process, where the results from each iteration is placed beside eachother, like this:
res =
43.7826 38.8460 38.6889 38.6912 38.6915
107.0735 98.5577 98.1212 98.1170 98.1175
-134.6218 -131.6938 -131.5378 -131.5352 -131.5352
-105.9498 -103.1403 -102.9195 -102.9139 -102.9139
What I want to do is create one matrix that shows the difference between each column, and one matrix that shows the percentage change from one column to the next.
This is obviously simple to do using loops, but is there a clever way to do this without loops (maybe using some built-in Matlab functions)?
Thanks.
The command diff(...) performes the difference:
diff_res = diff(res,1,2)
in this case the difference of the first order in the second dimension (columns).
After you can compute the percentage:
per_res = diff_res(:,1:4)./res(:,1:4).*100

Vectorize matlab code to map nearest values in two arrays

I have two lists of timestamps and I'm trying to create a map between them that uses the imu_ts as the true time and tries to find the nearest vicon_ts value to it. The output is a 3xd matrix where the first row is the imu_ts index, the third row is the unix time at that index, and the second row is the index of the closest vicon_ts value above the timestamp in the same column.
Here's my code so far and it works, but it's really slow. I'm not sure how to vectorize it.
function tmap = sync_times(imu_ts, vicon_ts)
tstart = max(vicon_ts(1), imu_ts(1));
tstop = min(vicon_ts(end), imu_ts(end));
%trim imu data to
tmap(1,:) = find(imu_ts >= tstart & imu_ts <= tstop);
tmap(3,:) = imu_ts(tmap(1,:));%Use imu_ts as ground truth
%Find nearest indecies in vicon data and map
vic_t = 1;
for i = 1:size(tmap,2)
%
while(vicon_ts(vic_t) < tmap(3,i))
vic_t = vic_t + 1;
end
tmap(2,i) = vic_t;
end
The timestamps are already sorted in ascending order, so this is essentially an O(n) operation but because it's looped it runs slowly. Any vectorized ways to do the same thing?
Edit
It appears to be running faster than I expected or first measured, so this is no longer a critical issue. But I would be interested to see if there are any good solutions to this problem.
Have a look at knnsearch in MATLAB. Use cityblock distance and also put an additional constraint that the data point in vicon_ts should be less than its neighbour in imu_ts. If it is not then take the next index. This is required because cityblock takes absolute distance. Another option (and preferred) is to write your custom distance function.
I believe that your current method is sound, and I would not try and vectorize any further. Vectorization can actually be harmful when you are trying to optimize some inner loops, especially when you know more about the context of your data (e.g. it is sorted) than the Mathworks engineers can know.
Things that I typically look for when I need to optimize some piece of code liek this are:
All arrays are pre-allocated (this is the biggest driver of performance)
Fast inner loops use simple code (Matlab does pretty effective JIT on basic commands, but must interpret others.)
Take advantage of any special data features that you have, e.g. use sort appropriate algorithms and early exit conditions from some loops.
You're already doing all this. I recommend no change.
A good start might be to get rid of the while, try something like:
for i = 1:size(tmap,2)
C = max(0,tmap(3,:)-vicon_ts(i));
tmap(2,i) = find(C==min(C));
end

nested forloops for running sliding window function for MATLAB

I'm trying to write a simple code that will generate the sum of a large window and divide by the sum of the small running window to get the energy ratio.
my code looks like this in MATLAB
S = data1;
[nt,ntraces] = size(S);
!Create sliding windows for First Break Picking:
!define a window length
!for large Window
nl = 300
!for small running Window
ns = 50
! tolerance/Fudge Factor
beta = 0.0000
for i_slide = 1:nt-nl
for i_large = i_slide:(i_slide+nl)
large_window(i_large) = sum(S(i_large).^2)';
for i_small = i_slide+ns:i_slide+nl
small_window(i_small) = sum(S(i_small).^2)';
end
end
ER(i_slide) = small_window/(large_window + beta);
end
The problem i am having is that my small running window is not indexing correctly nor is it running the sum along the whole large window length at the maximum slide.
any ideas how i can overcome this problem?
In general, the problem you're really trying to solve seems to be general 2-D (or 1-D?) convolution. You can use MATLAB's conv or conv2 function (or filter or imfilter, if you have image processing toolbox) to do this. If you need to write a 2-D convolution function, I wouldn't try and write one that does two convolutions and takes the ratio. Instead write a simple convolution function: my_conv and run it twice, and take the ratio. e.g., you're trying to write:
output = my_double_conv(data,smallFilt,bigFilt); %this does ratios
I don't think that's a good idea in general. Don't do that. Do
output = my_conv(data,smallFilt) ./ my_conv(data,bigFilt);
You might see some speed benefits from not having to index everything twice in my_double_conv, but if computational concerns are your issue, you shouldn't be writing your own convolution in the first place; instead you should be using FFT convolutions, or integral-image convolutions (e.g., http://hebb.mit.edu/courses/9.29/2004/readings/c13-1.pdf or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summed_area_table )
That said, your code has several problems. Have you tried debugging with the MATLAB debugger?
For example, this is clearly wrong, since i_small is a scalar index:
for i_small = i_slide+ns:i_slide+nl
small_window(i_small) = sum(S(i_small).^2)';
end
That sum is not going to "sum" over anything, since i_small will be a scalar...
Do you want:
small_window= S(i_slide+ns:i_slide+nl);
small_window_sum = sum(small_window.^2);
Also note that for element-wise matrix operations, like:
small_window/(large_window + beta);
Where small_window and large_window are scalars, you want:
small_window./(large_window + beta); %note the "."

What's the best way to iterate through columns of a matrix?

I want to apply a function to all columns in a matrix with MATLAB. For example, I'd like to be able to call smooth on every column of a matrix, instead of having smooth treat the matrix as a vector (which is the default behaviour if you call smooth(matrix)).
I'm sure there must be a more idiomatic way to do this, but I can't find it, so I've defined a map_column function:
function result = map_column(m, func)
result = m;
for col = 1:size(m,2)
result(:,col) = func(m(:,col));
end
end
which I can call with:
smoothed = map_column(input, #(c) (smooth(c, 9)));
Is there anything wrong with this code? How could I improve it?
The MATLAB "for" statement actually loops over the columns of whatever's supplied - normally, this just results in a sequence of scalars since the vector passed into for (as in your example above) is a row vector. This means that you can rewrite the above code like this:
function result = map_column(m, func)
result = [];
for m_col = m
result = horzcat(result, func(m_col));
end
If func does not return a column vector, then you can add something like
f = func(m_col);
result = horzcat(result, f(:));
to force it into a column.
Your solution is fine.
Note that horizcat exacts a substantial performance penalty for large matrices. It makes the code be O(N^2) instead of O(N). For a 100x10,000 matrix, your implementation takes 2.6s on my machine, the horizcat one takes 64.5s. For a 100x5000 matrix, the horizcat implementation takes 15.7s.
If you wanted, you could generalize your function a little and make it be able to iterate over the final dimension or even over arbitrary dimensions (not just columns).
Maybe you could always transform the matrix with the ' operator and then transform the result back.
smoothed = smooth(input', 9)';
That at least works with the fft function.
A way to cause an implicit loop across the columns of a matrix is to use cellfun. That is, you must first convert the matrix to a cell array, each cell will hold one column. Then call cellfun. For example:
A = randn(10,5);
See that here I've computed the standard deviation for each column.
cellfun(#std,mat2cell(A,size(A,1),ones(1,size(A,2))))
ans =
0.78681 1.1473 0.89789 0.66635 1.3482
Of course, many functions in MATLAB are already set up to work on rows or columns of an array as the user indicates. This is true of std of course, but this is a convenient way to test that cellfun worked successfully.
std(A,[],1)
ans =
0.78681 1.1473 0.89789 0.66635 1.3482
Don't forget to preallocate the result matrix if you are dealing with large matrices. Otherwise your CPU will spend lots of cycles repeatedly re-allocating the matrix every time it adds a new row/column.
If this is a common use-case for your function, it would perhaps be a good idea to make the function iterate through the columns automatically if the input is not a vector.
This doesn't exactly solve your problem but it would simplify the functions' usage. In that case, the output should be a matrix, too.
You can also transform the matrix to one long column by using m(:,:) = m(:). However, it depends on your function if this would make sense.