A Statistical Causal Inference Method for Exploring Ultrasonics and Topological Deformations in Biological Systems

摘要

Understanding deformations in biological systems (e.g., parietals of rhinolophus ferrumequinum) and their relations with ultrasonic functionalities is a fundamental science problem. It has promising potential of providing insightful guidance for design and manufacture of artificial sonars with promising potential. However, previous research encounters enormous real-world constraints, especially limited by environmental settings and availability of experimental animals. Moreover, existing works mainly focus on analyzing statistical correlations between geometric features and acoustic functionalities, and barely conduct causal inference, especially counterfactual reasoning, leading to a failure of in-depth understanding of the acoustic mechanism behind.