Daily Papers

Quantization for deep neural networks (DNNs) is the process of mapping the parameter values of DNNs from original data types to other data types of lower precision to reduce model sizes and make inference faster. Quantization often maps different original values to a single quantized value because the range of the original values is larger than the range of the quantized values. This leads to the degradation of the accuracy of the quantized DNNs. Outliers are a main cause of the degradation of quantization resolution because they enlarge the range of original values. To solve the problem, the percentile method is often used to clip outliers. However, clipping the outliers has another problem of removing the important and strong signals in the DNNs. This paper proposes SplitQuant to keep the outliers and improve the quantization resolution at the same time. SplitQuant narrows down the range of the original values and mitigates the effect of outliers by splitting each quantizable layer into three mathematically equivalent layers and applies different scaling factors. Especially, weights and biases are clustered into lower, middle and upper clusters for optimized split. By preprocessing DNNs with SplitQuant, quantization algorithms can achieve better results. SplitQuant was applied on two BERT-Tiny models and improved the accuracy of INT2 quantization by 3.3%p and 2.1%p, achieving accuracies comparable to those of the original FP32 models.

Human evaluation is increasingly critical for assessing large language models, capturing linguistic nuances, and reflecting user preferences more accurately than traditional automated metrics. However, the resource-intensive nature of this type of annotation process poses significant challenges. The key question driving our work: "is it feasible to minimize human-in-the-loop feedback by prioritizing data instances which most effectively distinguish between models?" We evaluate several metric-based methods and find that these metrics enhance the efficiency of human evaluations by minimizing the number of required annotations, thus saving time and cost, while ensuring a robust performance evaluation. We show that our method is effective across widely used model families, reducing instances of indecisive (or "tie") outcomes by up to 54% compared to a random sample when focusing on the top-20 percentile of prioritized instances. This potential reduction in required human effort positions our approach as a valuable strategy in future large language model evaluations.

Purpose: Accurate segmentation of clinical target volumes (CTV) and organs-at-risk is crucial for optimizing gynecologic brachytherapy (GYN-BT) treatment planning. However, anatomical variability, low soft-tissue contrast in CT imaging, and limited annotated datasets pose significant challenges. This study presents GynBTNet, a novel multi-stage learning framework designed to enhance segmentation performance through self-supervised pretraining and hierarchical fine-tuning strategies. Methods: GynBTNet employs a three-stage training strategy: (1) self-supervised pretraining on large-scale CT datasets using sparse submanifold convolution to capture robust anatomical representations, (2) supervised fine-tuning on a comprehensive multi-organ segmentation dataset to refine feature extraction, and (3) task-specific fine-tuning on a dedicated GYN-BT dataset to optimize segmentation performance for clinical applications. The model was evaluated against state-of-the-art methods using the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC), 95th percentile Hausdorff Distance (HD95), and Average Surface Distance (ASD). Results: Our GynBTNet achieved superior segmentation performance, significantly outperforming nnU-Net and Swin-UNETR. Notably, it yielded a DSC of 0.837 +/- 0.068 for CTV, 0.940 +/- 0.052 for the bladder, 0.842 +/- 0.070 for the rectum, and 0.871 +/- 0.047 for the uterus, with reduced HD95 and ASD compared to baseline models. Self-supervised pretraining led to consistent performance improvements, particularly for structures with complex boundaries. However, segmentation of the sigmoid colon remained challenging, likely due to anatomical ambiguities and inter-patient variability. Statistical significance analysis confirmed that GynBTNet's improvements were significant compared to baseline models.