Anomaly Detection Using a Variational Autoencoder Neural Network With a Novel Objective Function and Gaussian Mixture Model Selection Technique

Bowman, Brandon/ Naval Postgraduate School

ISBN 10: 168741257X / ISBN 13: 9781687412577

Published by Independently published, 2019

About this Item

85 pages. 11.00x8.50x0.22 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # zk168741257X

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Anomaly Detection Using a Variational Autoencoder Neural Network With a Novel Objective Function and Gaussian Mixture Model Selection Technique
• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 168741257X
• ISBN 13: 9781687412577
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.28 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

Anomalies in data often convey critical information that can be leveraged in a variety of applications. For the military engaged in combat, this can amount to identifying threats early and preserving a lethal edge over an adversary. In other more benign cases it can corrupt data integrity and lead to ineffective application of other data analysis techniques. To tackle the problem of anomaly detection, there are several common methods provided in statistics and machine learning literature, including variational autoencoders (VAEs). Using a VAE, we develop a novel objective function to improve its performance detecting anomalies. Additionally, we introduce a modeling pipeline that works in the fully unsupervised context, where one does not know the true proportion of anomalies present in the data. To construct this pipeline, we fit reconstruction errors using a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and select the model whose characteristics best match our performance metrics. Using our approach, we observe an increase in anomalies detected against a standard objective function, and we measure an average improvement of 0.4021 in F1 scores. We show our findings using four labeled benchmark data sets and apply our conclusions on an open-source, unlabeled data set taken from USASpending.gov.