YOUR EYE ON INNOVATIVE MACHINE LEARNING SOLVING REAL WORLD PROBLEMS
Azafran Capital Partners
INSIGHTS issue SEVEN A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Words This age-old anecdote is now even more true than we could have imagined even 5 or 10 years ago. As the Azafran team strengthens and deepens its focus on the modalities of voice, acoustics and imagery, we dedicate this issue of INSIGHTS to the emerging world of imagery as a modality for machine/deep learning, science and the incredible products and companies that are emerging in the space. As a human expression and much like voice and acoustics, imagery has been with us since ancient times, with the oldest-known example of figurative art anywhere in the world—the world’s very first picture - found in the caves of Indonesia dating back over 35K years ago. Also, like voice and acoustics, imagery has had a place in society and science but with the advances of the past decades in data, machine learning and deep science, imagery has taken on a new role, as a new modality feeding these incredible engines with sources of data never imagined before. Another important consideration is that machines see images differently than humans, where we largely associate by shapes, machines tend to interpret textures, so each has particular advantages/disadvantages in evaluation. As reported in a recent Quanta Magazine, “To make deep learning algorithms use shapes to identify objects, as humans do, researchers trained the systems with images that had been “painted” with irrelevant textures. The systems’ performance improved, a result that may hold clues about the evolution of our own vision.” The implications and opportunities here are staggering and the Azafran team is focused on this segment, with active investments partnerships forming. We’ll continue to write and communicate our stories on this front, with this issue as a starting point for much to come.
Company Focus: Mobile Based Security “SWORD is the single most exciting project I have ever worked on. Bringing a challenging and disruptive new IoT device to the market has also proven to be the most challenging project I have ever been part of.” - Barry Oberholzer CEO & Founder, SWORD
As a prime example of benefits and product impact not even conceivable a decade ago, SWORD capabilities include the proactive, non-invasive, remote scanning of individuals, objects and packages for detection and identification of concealed weapons and persons of interest. Our threat detection functionality is a combination of 3 technologies connected by proprietary software algorithms and custom low frequency millimeter wave technology. SWORD features are
issue seven FOCUS At Azafran Capital Partners, we invest in companies using Deep Learning and Machine Learning, emphasizing voice, acoustics and imagery datasets in the health, wellness, robotics/sensory and enterprise spaces. Issue Seven of INSIGHTS focuses on new advances and opportunities using imagery as the input and modality to machine learning and deep science engines. Alongside voice and acoustics, incredible innovation is occurring from picture imagery fueling complex algorithms to sensory devices using live images and imagery driving companies, technologies and advancements for humanity.
The computer-assisted analysis for better interpreting images have been long standing issues in the medical imaging field. On the image-understanding front, recent advances in machine learning, especially, in the way of deep learning, have made a big leap to help identify, classify, and quantify patterns in medical images. Specifically, exploiting hierarchical feature representations learned solely from data, instead of handcrafted features mostly designed based on domain-specific knowledge, lies at the core of the advances.”
agnostic to environmental conditions and can operate in rain, fog or total darkness. Our multi-tiered threat detection platform can simultaneously scan for known persons on a custom database, over 8,000 known weapons and runs continuous gunshot detection technology, all within milliseconds. “The Azafran team has been impressed with
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Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis National Institutes of Health
SWORD’s founders and technology since our first meeting,” notes James F. Kenefick, Azafran Managing Partner. He adds, “the benefits are game-changing on so many levels, for society, our fund and our investors, we are excited to have a term sheet signed with SWORD and look forward to working with them in the months and years to come.” Volume 1 Issue 7 - Page One