Publications

2022
Benaggoune K, Al-Masry Z, Ma J, Devalland C, Mouss L-H, Zerhouni N. A deep learning pipeline for breast cancer ki-67 proliferation index scoring. Image and Video Processing (eess.IV) [Internet]. 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract
The Ki-67 proliferation index is an essential biomarker that helps pathologists to diagnose and select appropriate treatments. However, automatic evaluation of Ki-67 is difficult due to nuclei overlapping and complex variations in their properties. This paper proposes an integrated pipeline for accurate automatic counting of Ki-67, where the impact of nuclei separation techniques is highlighted. First, semantic segmentation is performed by combining the Squeez and Excitation Resnet and Unet algorithms to extract nuclei from the background. The extracted nuclei are then divided into overlapped and non-overlapped regions based on eight geometric and statistical features. A marker-based Watershed algorithm is subsequently proposed and applied only to the overlapped regions to separate nuclei. Finally, deep features are extracted from each nucleus patch using Resnet18 and classified into positive or negative by a random forest classifier. The proposed pipeline’s performance is validated on a dataset from the Department of Pathology at Hôpital Nord Franche-Comté hospital.
Berghout T, Benbouzid M, Ferrag M-A. Deep Learning with Recurrent Expansion for Electricity Theft Detection in Smart Grids. 48th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON 2022 [Internet]. 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract
The increase in electricity theft has become one of the main concerns of power distribution networks. Indeed, electricity theft could not only lead to financial losses, but also leads to reputation damage by reducing the quality of supply. With advanced sensing technologies of metering infrastructures, data collection of electricity consumption enables data-driven methods to emerge in such non-technical loss detections as an alternative to traditional experience-based human-centric approaches. In this context, such fraud prediction problems are generally a thematic of missing patterns, class imbalance, and higher level of cardinality where there are many possibilities that a single feature can assume. Therefore, this article is introduced specifically to solve data representation problem and increase the sparseness between different data classes. As a result, deeper representations than deep learning networks are introduced to repeatedly merge the learning models themselves into a more complex architecture in a sort of recurrent expansion. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed recurrent expansion of deep learning (REDL) approach, a realistic dataset of electricity theft is involved. Consequently, REDL has achieved excellent data mapping results proven by both visualization and numerical metrics and shows the ability of separating different classes with higher performance. Another important REDL feature of outliers correction has been also discovered in this study. Finally, comparison to some recent works also proved superiority of REDL model.
Berghout T, Benbouzid M. Detecting Cyberthreats in Smart Grids Using Small-Scale Machine Learning. ELECTRIMACS 2022 [Internet]. 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Due to advanced monitoring technologies including the plug-in of the cyber and physical layers on the Internet, cyber-physical systems are becoming more vulnerable than ever to cyberthreats leading to possible damage of the system. Consequently, many researchers have devoted to studying detection and identification of such threats in order to mitigate their drawbacks. Among used tools, Machine Learning (ML) has become dominant in the field due to many usability characteristics including the blackbox models availability. In this context, this paper is dedicated to the detection of cyberattacks in Smart Grid (SG) networks which uses industrial control systems (ICS), through the integration of ML models assembled on a small scale. More precisely, it therefore aims to study an electric traction substation system used for the railway industry. The main novelty of our contribution lies in the study of the behaviour of more realistic data than the traditional studies previously shown in the state of the art literature by investigating even more realistic types of attacks. It also emulates data analysis and a larger feature space under most commonly used connectivity protocols in today’s industry such as S7Comm and Modbus.
Zermane H, Drardja A. Development of an efficient cement production monitoring system based on the improved random forest algorithm. The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology [Internet]. 2022;120 :1853. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Strengthening production plants and process control functions contribute to a global improvement of manufacturing systems because of their cross-functional characteristics in the industry. Companies established various innovative and operational strategies; there is increasing competitiveness among them and increasing companies’ value. Machine learning (ML) techniques become an intelligent enticing option to address industrial issues in the current manufacturing sector since the emergence of Industry 4.0 and the extensive integration of paradigms such as big data and high computational power. Implementing a system able to identify faults early to avoid critical situations in the production line and its environment is crucial. Therefore, powerful machine learning algorithms are performed for fault diagnosis, real-time data classification, and predicting the state of functioning of the production line. Random forests proved to be a better classifier with an accuracy of 97%, compared to the SVM model’s accuracy which is 94.18%. However, the K-NN model’s accuracy is about 93.83%. An accuracy of 80.25% is achieved by the logistic regression model. About 83.73% is obtained by the decision tree’s model. The excellent experimental results reached on the random forest model demonstrated the merits of this implementation in the production performance, ensuring predictive maintenance and avoiding wasting energy.
Haouassi H, Mahdaoui R, Chouhal O, Bekhouche A. An efficient classification rule generation for coronary artery disease diagnosis using a novel discrete equilibrium optimizer algorithm. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems [Internet]. 2022;43 (3) :2315-2331. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Many machine learning-based methods have been widely applied to Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) and are achieving high accuracy. However, they are black-box methods that are unable to explain the reasons behind the diagnosis. The trade-off between accuracy and interpretability of diagnosis models is important, especially for human disease. This work aims to propose an approach for generating rule-based models for CAD diagnosis. The classification rule generation is modeled as combinatorial optimization problem and it can be solved by means of metaheuristic algorithms. Swarm intelligence algorithms like Equilibrium Optimizer Algorithm (EOA) have demonstrated great performance in solving different optimization problems. Our present study comes up with a Novel Discrete Equilibrium Optimizer Algorithm (NDEOA) for the classification rule generation from training CAD dataset. The proposed NDEOA is a discrete version of EOA, which use a discrete encoding of a particle for representing a classification rule; new discrete operators are also defined for the particle’s position update equation to adapt real operators to discrete space. To evaluate the proposed approach, the real world Z-Alizadeh Sani dataset has been employed. The proposed approach generate a diagnosis model composed of 17 rules, among them, five rules for the class “Normal” and 12 rules for the class “CAD”. In comparison to nine black-box and eight white-box state-of-the-art approaches, the results show that the generated diagnosis model by the proposed approach is more accurate and more interpretable than all white-box models and are competitive to the black-box models. It achieved an overall accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 93.54%, 80% and 100% respectively; which show that, the proposed approach can be successfully utilized to generate efficient rule-based CAD diagnosis models.
Berghout T, Benbouzid M. EL-NAHL: Exploring labels autoencoding in augmented hidden layers of feedforward neural networks for cybersecurity in smart grids. Reliability Engineering & System Safety [Internet]. 2022;226. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Reliability and security of power distribution and data traffic in smart grid (SG) are very important for industrial control systems (ICS). Indeed, SG cyber-physical connectivity is subject to several vulnerabilities that can damage or disrupt its process immunity via cyberthreats. Today’s ICSs are experiencing highly complex data change and dynamism, increasing the complexity of detecting and mitigating cyberattacks. Subsequently, and since Machine Learning (ML) is widely studied in cybersecurity, the objectives of this paper are twofold. First, for algorithmic simplicity, a small-scale ML algorithm that attempts to reduce computational costs is proposed. The algorithm adopts a neural network with an augmented hidden layer (NAHL) to easily and efficiently accomplish the learning procedures. Second, to solve the data complexity problem regarding rapid change and dynamism, a label autoencoding approach is introduced for Embedding Labels in the NAHL (EL-NAHL) architecture to take advantage of labels propagation when separating data scatters. Furthermore, to provide a more realistic analysis by addressing real-world threat scenarios, a dataset of an electric traction substation used in the high-speed rail industry is adopted in this work. Compared to some existing algorithms and other previous works, the achieved results show that the proposed EL-NAHL architecture is effective even under massive dynamically changed and imbalanced data.
Bellal S-E. Exploration du Potentiel de la vision artificielle pour lareconnaissance d'objets en vue d'une conception d'un dispositif intelligent dans un context industriel. [Internet]. 2022. Publisher's Version
Berghout T, Benbouzid M, Bentrcia T, Amirat Y, Mouss L{\"ıla-H. Exposing Deep Representations to a Recurrent Expansion with Multiple Repeats for Fuel Cells Time Series Prognosis. Le{\"ıla-Hayet [Internet]. 2022;24 (7). Publisher's VersionAbstract
The green conversion of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) has received particular attention in both stationary and transportation applications. However, the poor durability of PEMFC represents a major problem that hampers its commercial application since dynamic operating conditions, including physical deterioration, have a serious impact on the cell performance. Under these circumstances, prognosis and health management (PHM) plays an important role in prolonging durability and preventing damage propagation via the accurate planning of a condition-based maintenance (CBM) schedule. In this specific topic, health deterioration modeling with deep learning (DL) is the widely studied representation learning tool due to its adaptation ability to rapid changes in data complexity and drift. In this context, the present paper proposes an investigation of further deeper representations by exposing DL models themselves to recurrent expansion with multiple repeats. Such a recurrent expansion of DL (REDL) allows new, more meaningful representations to be explored by repeatedly using generated feature maps and responses to create new robust models. The proposed REDL, which is designed to be an adaptive learning algorithm, is tested on a PEMFC deterioration dataset and compared to its deep learning baseline version under time series analysis. Using multiple numeric and visual metrics, the results support the REDL learning scheme by showing promising performances.
AKSA K. Graph theory. Editions universitaires européennes.; 2022 pp. 76.Abstract
Graph theory is a vast field that constitutes a very important body of knowledge. Indeed, this book is just an introduction aiming at clarifying some essential points in this vital field: basic notions, some basic algorithms that are used to solve some classical and famous problems like path finding, tree finding, flow finding, ...etc. Finally, graph theory can be summarized by what Napoleon said: "A little drawing is better than a big speech".
Berghout T, Bentrcia T, Ferrag M-A, Benbouzid M. A Heterogeneous Federated Transfer Learning Approach with Extreme Aggregation and Speed. Mathematics [Internet]. 2022;10 (19). Publisher's VersionAbstract
Federated learning (FL) is a data-privacy-preserving, decentralized process that allows local edge devices of smart infrastructures to train a collaborative model independently while keeping data localized. FL algorithms, encompassing a well-structured average of the training parameters (e.g., the weights and biases resulting from training-based stochastic gradient descent variants), are subject to many challenges, namely expensive communication, systems heterogeneity, statistical heterogeneity, and privacy concerns. In this context, our paper targets the four aforementioned challenges while focusing on reducing communication and computational costs by involving recursive least squares (RLS) training rules. Accordingly, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the RLS algorithm is modified to completely accommodate non-independent and identically distributed data (non-IID) for federated transfer learning (FTL). Furthermore, this paper also introduces a newly generated dataset capable of emulating such real conditions and of making data investigation available on ordinary commercial computers with quad-core microprocessors and less need for higher computing hardware. Applications of FTL-RLS on the generated data under different levels of complexity closely related to different levels of cardinality lead to a variety of conclusions supporting its performance for future uses.
Tarek B, Benbouzid M, Amirat Y. Improving Small-scale Machine Learning with Recurrent Expansion for Fuel Cells Time Series Prognosis. 48th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON 2022) [Internet]. 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract
The clean energy conversion characteristics of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have given rise to many applications, particularly in transportation. Unfortunately, the commercial application of PEMFCs is hampered by the early deterioration and low durability of the cells. In this case, accurate real-time condition monitoring plays an important role in extending the lifespan of PEMFCs through accurate planning of maintenance tasks. Accordingly, among the widely used modeling tools such as model-driven and data-driven, machine learning has received much attention and has been extensively studied in the literature. Small-scale machine learning (SML) and Deep Learning (DL) are subcategories of machine learning that have been exploited so far. In this context and since SML usually contains non-expansive approximators, this study was dedicated to improving its feature representations for better predictions. Therefore, a recurrent expansion experiment was conducted for several rounds to investigate a linear regression model under time series prognosis of PEMFCs. The results revealed that the prediction performance of SML tools under stationary conditions could be further improved.
Zermane H. Improving Supervised Machine Learning Models for Face Recognition: a Comparative Study. 4th International Conference on Engineering Science and Technology (ICEST2022) 16th-7th of February. 2022.
Merghem M, Haoues M, Mouss K-N, Dahane M, SENOUSSI A. Integrated production and maintenance planning in hybrid manufacturing-remanufacturing system with outsourcing opportunities, in 4th International Conference on Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing Procedia Computer Science. ScienceDirect ; 2022.
Benaggoune K, Meiling Y, Jemei S, Zerhouni N. A Knowledge Transfer Approach for Online PEMFC Degradation prediction with Uncertainty Quantification. 12th International Conference on Power, Energy and Electrical Engineering (CPEEE) [Internet]. 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) are a key challenger for the world’s future clean and renewable energy solution. Yet, fuel cells are susceptible to operating conditions and hydrogen impurities, leading to performance loss over time in service. Hence, performance degradation prediction is gaining attention recently for fuel cell system reliability. In this work, we present a knowledge transfer approach for online voltage drop prediction. A dual-path convolution neural network is proposed to extract linearity and non-linearity from historical data and performs multi-steps ahead prediction with uncertainty quantification. Online voltage prediction is then evaluated with and without knowledge transfer using two different PEMFC datasets. Results indicate that our proposed approach with transfer knowledge can predict the voltage drop accurately with a small uncertainty range compared to the conventional approach.
Berghout T, Benbouzid M, Muyeen S-M. Machine learning for cybersecurity in smart grids: A comprehensive review-based study on methods, solutions, and prospects. International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection [Internet]. 2022;38. Publisher's VersionAbstract
In modern Smart Grids (SGs) ruled by advanced computing and networking technologies, condition monitoring relies on secure cyberphysical connectivity. Due to this connection, a portion of transported data, containing confidential information, must be protected as it is vulnerable and subject to several cyber threats. SG cyberspace adversaries attempt to gain access through networking platforms to commit several criminal activities such as disrupting or malicious manipulation of whole electricity delivery process including generation, distribution, and even customer services such as billing, leading to serious damage, including financial losses and loss of reputation. Therefore, human awareness training and software technologies are necessary precautions to ensure the reliability of data traffic and power transmission. By exploring the available literature, it is undeniable that Machine Learning (ML) has become the latest in the timeline and one of the leading artificial intelligence technologies capable of detecting, identifying, and responding by mitigating adversary attacks in SGs. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to review different ML tools used in recent years for cyberattacks analysis in SGs. It also provides important guidelines on ML model selection as a global solution when building an attack predictive model. A detailed classification is therefore developed with respect to data security triad, i.e., Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) within different types of cyber threats, systems, and datasets. Furthermore, this review highlights the various encountered challenges, drawbacks, and possible solutions as future prospects for ML cybersecurity applications in SGs.
Lahmar H, Dahane M, Mouss N-K, Haoues M. Multi-objective production planning of new and remanufactured products in hybrid production system. 10th IFAC Conference Onmanufacturing Modelling, Management And Control 22-24 June. 2022.
Soltani M, Aouag H, Mouss M-D. A multiple criteria decision-making improvement strategy in complex manufacturing processes. International Journal of Operational Research [Internet]. 2022;45 (2). Publisher's VersionAbstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose an improvement strategy based on multi-criteria decision making approaches, including fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), preference ranking organisation method for enrichment evaluation II (PROMETHEE) and vi\v sekriterijumsko kompromisno rangiranje (VIKOR) for the objective of simplifying and organising the improvement process in complex manufacturing processes. Firstly, the proposed strategy started with the selection of decision makers’, such as company leaders, to determine performance indicators. Then fuzzy AHP is used to quantify the weight of each defined indicators. Finally, the weights carried out from fuzzy AHP approach are used as input in VIKOR and PROMETHE II to rank the operations according to their improvement priority. The results obtained from each outranking method are compared and the best method is determined.
Mebarki N, Benmoussa S, Djeziri M, Mouss L{\"ıla-H. New Approach for Failure Prognosis Using a Bond Graph, Gaussian Mixture Model and Similarity Techniques. Processes [Internet]. 2022;10 (3). Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper proposes a new approach for remaining useful life prediction that combines a bond graph, the Gaussian Mixture Model and similarity techniques to allow the use of both physical knowledge and the data available. The proposed method is based on the identification of relevant variables that carry information on degradation. To this end, the causal properties of the bond graph (BG) are first used to identify the relevant sensors through the fault observability. Then, a second stage of analysis based on statistical metrics is performed to reduce the number of sensors to only the ones carrying useful information for failure prognosis, thus, optimizing the data to be used in the prognosis phase. To generate data in the different system state, a simulator based on the developed BG is used. A Gaussian Mixture Model is then applied on the generated data for fault diagnosis and clustering. The Remaining Useful Life is estimated using a similarity technique. An application on a mechatronic system is considered for highlighting the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Haouassi H, Haouassi H, Mehdaoui R, Maarouk TM, Chouhal O. A new binary grasshopper optimization algorithm for feature selection problem. Journal of King Saud University - Computer and Information Sciences [Internet]. 2022;34 (2). Publisher's VersionAbstract
The grasshopper optimization algorithm is one of the recently population-based optimization techniques inspired by the behaviours of grasshoppers in nature. It is an efficient optimization algorithm and since demonstrates excellent performance in solving continuous problems, but cannot resolve directly binary optimization problems. Many optimization problems have been modelled as binary problems since their decision variables varied in binary space such as feature selection in data classification. The main goal of feature selection is to find a small size subset of feature from a sizeable original set of features that optimize the classification accuracy. In this paper, a new binary variant of the grasshopper optimization algorithm is proposed and used for the feature subset selection problem. This proposed new binary grasshopper optimization algorithm is tested and compared to five well-known swarm-based algorithms used in feature selection problem. All these algorithms are implemented and experimented assessed on twenty data sets with various sizes. The results demonstrated that the proposed approach could outperform the other tested methods.
Bouzenita M, Mouss L-H, Melgani F, Bentrcia T. New fusion frameworks including explicit weighting functions for the remaining useful life prognostics. Expert Systems with Applications [Internet]. 2022;189 (1). Publisher's VersionAbstract

In the last recent years, a large community of researchers and industrial practitioners has been attracted by combining different prognostics models as such strategy results in boosted accuracy and robust performance compared to the exploitation of single models. The present work is devoted to the investigation of three new fusion schemes for the remaining useful life forecast. These integrated frameworks are based on aggregating a set of Gaussian process regression models thanks to the Induced Ordered Weighted Averaging Operators. The combination procedure is built upon three proposed analytical weighting schemes including exponential, logarithmic and inverse functions. In addition, the uncertainty aspect is supported in this work, where the proposed functions are used to weighted average the variances released from competitive Gaussian process regression models. The training data are transformed into gradient values, which are adopted as new training data instead of the original observations. A lithium-ion battery data set is used as a benchmark to prove the efficiency of the proposed weighting schemes. The obtained results are promising and may provide some guidelines for future advances in performing robust fusion options to accurately estimate the remaining useful life.

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