Addressing Phase Discrepancies in Functional Data: A Bayesian Approach for Accurate Alignment and Smoothing

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Main Authors: Gardella, Jacopo, Argiento, Raffaele, Casa, Alessandro, Pini, Alessia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gardella, Jacopo
Argiento, Raffaele
Casa, Alessandro
Pini, Alessia
author_facet Gardella, Jacopo
Argiento, Raffaele
Casa, Alessandro
Pini, Alessia
contents In many real-world applications, functional data exhibit considerable variability in both amplitude and phase. This is especially true in biomechanical data such as the knee flexion angle dataset motivating our work, where timing differences across curves can obscure meaningful comparisons. Curves of this study also exhibit substantial variability from one another. These pronounced differences make the dataset particularly challenging to align properly without distorting or losing some of the individual curves characteristics. Our alignment model addresses these challenges by eliminating phase discrepancies while preserving the individual characteristics of each curve and avoiding distortion, thanks to its flexible smoothing component. Additionally, the model accommodates group structures through a dedicated parameter. By leveraging the Bayesian approach, the new prior on the warping parameters ensures that the resulting warping functions automatically satisfy all necessary validity conditions. We applied our model to the knee flexion dataset, demonstrating excellent performance in both smoothing and alignment, particularly in the presence of high inter-curve variability and complex group structures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_14650
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Addressing Phase Discrepancies in Functional Data: A Bayesian Approach for Accurate Alignment and Smoothing
Gardella, Jacopo
Argiento, Raffaele
Casa, Alessandro
Pini, Alessia
Methodology
Applications
In many real-world applications, functional data exhibit considerable variability in both amplitude and phase. This is especially true in biomechanical data such as the knee flexion angle dataset motivating our work, where timing differences across curves can obscure meaningful comparisons. Curves of this study also exhibit substantial variability from one another. These pronounced differences make the dataset particularly challenging to align properly without distorting or losing some of the individual curves characteristics. Our alignment model addresses these challenges by eliminating phase discrepancies while preserving the individual characteristics of each curve and avoiding distortion, thanks to its flexible smoothing component. Additionally, the model accommodates group structures through a dedicated parameter. By leveraging the Bayesian approach, the new prior on the warping parameters ensures that the resulting warping functions automatically satisfy all necessary validity conditions. We applied our model to the knee flexion dataset, demonstrating excellent performance in both smoothing and alignment, particularly in the presence of high inter-curve variability and complex group structures.
title Addressing Phase Discrepancies in Functional Data: A Bayesian Approach for Accurate Alignment and Smoothing
topic Methodology
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14650