Improving the robustness of neural ODEs with minimal weight perturbation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: De Marinis, Arturo, Guglielmi, Nicola, Sicilia, Stefano, Tudisco, Francesco
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author De Marinis, Arturo
Guglielmi, Nicola
Sicilia, Stefano
Tudisco, Francesco
author_facet De Marinis, Arturo
Guglielmi, Nicola
Sicilia, Stefano
Tudisco, Francesco
contents We propose a method to enhance the stability of a neural ordinary differential equation (neural ODE) by reducing the maximum error growth subsequent to a perturbation of the initial value. Since the stability depends on the logarithmic norm of the Jacobian matrix associated with the neural ODE, we control the logarithmic norm by perturbing the weight matrices of the neural ODE by a smallest possible perturbation (in Frobenius norm). We do so by engaging an eigenvalue optimisation problem, for which we propose a nested two-level algorithm. For a given perturbation size of the weight matrix, the inner level computes optimal perturbations of that size, while - at the outer level - we tune the perturbation amplitude until we reach the desired uniform stability bound. We embed the proposed algorithm in the training of the neural ODE to improve its robustness to perturbations of the initial value, as adversarial attacks. Numerical experiments on classical image datasets show that an image classifier including a neural ODE in its architecture trained according to our strategy is more stable than the same classifier trained in the classical way, and therefore, it is more robust and less vulnerable to adversarial attacks.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_10740
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Improving the robustness of neural ODEs with minimal weight perturbation
De Marinis, Arturo
Guglielmi, Nicola
Sicilia, Stefano
Tudisco, Francesco
Numerical Analysis
Optimization and Control
We propose a method to enhance the stability of a neural ordinary differential equation (neural ODE) by reducing the maximum error growth subsequent to a perturbation of the initial value. Since the stability depends on the logarithmic norm of the Jacobian matrix associated with the neural ODE, we control the logarithmic norm by perturbing the weight matrices of the neural ODE by a smallest possible perturbation (in Frobenius norm). We do so by engaging an eigenvalue optimisation problem, for which we propose a nested two-level algorithm. For a given perturbation size of the weight matrix, the inner level computes optimal perturbations of that size, while - at the outer level - we tune the perturbation amplitude until we reach the desired uniform stability bound. We embed the proposed algorithm in the training of the neural ODE to improve its robustness to perturbations of the initial value, as adversarial attacks. Numerical experiments on classical image datasets show that an image classifier including a neural ODE in its architecture trained according to our strategy is more stable than the same classifier trained in the classical way, and therefore, it is more robust and less vulnerable to adversarial attacks.
title Improving the robustness of neural ODEs with minimal weight perturbation
topic Numerical Analysis
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10740