Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR project DMASC: Scaling Invariance of Cardiac Signals, Dynamical Systems and Multifractal Analysis

Participants : Julien Barral, Claire Médigue, Michel Sorine.

Collaboration with Denis Chemla (Kremlin-Bicêtre Hospital), Paulo Gonçalves (Inria Rhônes-Alpes) and Stéphane Seuret (Paris 12 University).

The ANR project DMASC (Program SYSCOMM 2008) started in January 2009 under the coordination of J. Barral.

Numerical studies using ideas from statistical physics, large deviations theory and functions analysis have exhibited striking scaling invariance properties for human long-term R-R interval signals extracted from ECG (intervals between two consecutive heartbeats). These numerical studies reveal that the scaling invariance may have different forms depending upon the states of the patients in particular for certain cardiac diseases. These observations suggest that a good understanding of multifractal properties of cardiac signals might lead to new pertinent tools for diagnosis and surveillance. However, until now, neither satisfactory physiological interpretations of these properties nor mathematical models have been proposed for these signals. For medical applications we need to go beyond the previously mentioned works and achieve a deepened study of the scaling invariance structure of cardiac signals. This is the aim of DMASC.

New robust algorithms for the multifractal signals processing are required ; specifically, it seems relevant to complete the usual statistical approach with a geometric study of the scaling invariance. In addition, it is necessary to apply these tools to a number of data arising from distinct pathologies, in order to start a classification of the different features of the observed scaling invariance, and to relate them to physiology. This should contribute to develop a new flexible multifractal mathematical model whose parameters could be adjusted according to the observed pathology. This multifractal analysis can be applied to another fundamental signal, the arterial blood pressure, as well as to the couple (R-R, Blood Pressure). The main results of this project can be found in [15] .

ANR project EBONSI: Extended Block-Oriented Nonlinear System Identification

Participants : Pierre-Alexandre Bliman, Michel Sorine, Qinghua Zhang.

The main idea of block-oriented nonlinear system identification is to model a complex system with interconnected simple blocks. Such models can cover a large number of industrial applications, and are yet simple enough for theoretic studies. The objectives of the EBONSI project are to extend classical block-oriented nonlinear models to new model structures motivated by industrial applications, and to relax some traditional restrictions on experimental conditions. This is an international project jointly funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (NSFC) from 2011 to 2014. The project partners are the SISYPHE project-team of Inria (project leader), the Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy (CRAN), and the Laboratory of Industrial Process Monitoring and Optimization of Peking University.

ANR project 0-DEFECT: On-board fault diagnosis for wired networks in automotive systems

Participants : Mohamed Oumri, Michel Sorine, Qinghua Zhang.

The number of electric and electronic equipments is increasing rapidly in automotive vehicles. Consequently, the reliability of electric connections is becoming more and more important. The project entitled “Outil de diagnostic embarqué de faisseaux automobiles” (0-DEFECT) aims at developping tools for on-bord diagnosis of failures in electric wire connections in automotive systems. This project is funded by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) from 2009 to 2012. The involved partners are CEA LIST (project leader), Renault Trucks, Freescale, PSA, Delphi, Supelec LGEP and Inria.

ANR project INSCAN: Fault diagnosis for security critical long distance electric transmission lines

Participants : Leila Djaziri, Michel Sorine, Qinghua Zhang.

The wired electric networks of the French railway system cover more than 50000 km. The electric insulation of the signaling lines along the railways is monitored by regular inspections. Today these inspections are based on an expensive procedure realized by human operators located at both ends of each section of a transmission line. The service of signaling devices has to be interrupted during this procedure, and so does the railway traffic. The in situ monitoring of the transmission lines, without interruption of service, is thus an important economic issue. For this purpose, the project entitled “Diagnostic de câbles électriques sécuritaires pour grandes infrastructures" is funded by ANR from 2009 to 2012 in order to study the feasibility of in situ monitoring tools for these transmission lines. The involved partners are SNCF (project leader), CEA LIST and Inria.

ANR project SODDA: Soft Defects Diagnosis in wired networks

The need for detection, localization and characterization of defects in a cables network has led to several projects, funded by the ANR: SEEDS followed by 0-DEFECT in the automotive domain, INSCAN for cables along railways. These co-operative works made it possible to provide the foundations of diagnosis methods for cables – with a proof of feasibility in the case of hard defects (short-circuit, open circuit) - and some theoretical results on the associated inverse problems in the case of soft faults. They also made it possible to identify their limits. One of the principal limits of these methods, based on the principles of reflectometry, is the difficulty of detecting soft defects. If it was possible to detect and locate precisely these defects, that would help for preventive maintenance or prognosis. The objective of the SODDA project is to study the signatures of the soft defects, by combining theory and experiment, and to design and test innovative methods adapted to these signatures which are very difficult to detect. The project will be run by an academic consortium, in close connection with an industrial board, responsible for keeping the work in realistic and relevant use cases. The Inria teams involved are POEMS and Sisyphe.

ANR project EPOQ2: Estimation PrOblems for Quantum & Quantumlike systems

Participants : Hadis Amini, Zaki Leghtas, Mazyar Mirrahimi, Pierre Rouchon, Michel Sorine.

The project EPOQ2 is an ANR “Young researcher” project led by Mazyar Mirrahimi (Sisyphe). It has for goal to address a class of inverse problems rising from either the emerging application domain of “quantum engineering” or from some classical applications where a natural quantization lead to quantum-like systems, as it is the case in particular for inverse scattering for transmission lines. This research is in collaboration with the Pierre Aigrain laboratory (LPA) at ENS Paris and the Quantronics Laboratory (Qlab) of Michel Devoret and the Rob Schoelkopf Lab at Yale University and Pierre Rouchon from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris.

Inria Large Scale Initiative Action REGATE

REGATE (REgulation of the GonAdoTropE axis) is a 4-year Large Scale Initiative Action funded by Inria in May 2009 dedicated to the modeling, simulation and control of the gonadotrope axis.

The action is coordinated by Frédérique Clément. The Inria participants to this action are researchers of 2 Inria research teams, Contraintes and Sisyphe. There are also participants from INRA, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Unité de Chronobiologie théorique) and Université Paris 6 (Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions).