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Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Development of an Individual-Tree Basal Area Increment Model using a Linear Mixed-Effects Approach
Published on: July 3, 2020
Piecewise Linear Slope Estimation
A N Ingle1, W A Sethares2, T Varghese1
1Depts. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA ; Depts. of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Abstract:
This paper presents a method for directly estimating slope values in a noisy piecewise linear function. By imposing a Markov structure on the sequence of slopes, piecewise linear fitting is posed as a maximum a posteriori estimation problem. A dynamic program efficiently solves this by traversing a linearly growing trellis. The alternating maximization algorithm (a kind of pseudo-EM method) is used to estimate the model parameters from data and its convergence behavior is analyzed. Ultrasound shear wave imaging is presented as a primary application. The algorithm is general enough for applicability in other fields, as suggested by an application to the estimation of shifts in financial interest rate data.
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