Beyond Distance: Quantifying Point Cloud Dynamics with Persistent Homology and Dynamic Optimal Transport
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Abstract (arXiv)
We introduce a framework for analyzing topological tipping in time-evolutionary point clouds by extending the recently proposed Topological Optimal Transport (TpOT) distance. While TpOT unifies geometric, homological, and higher-order relations into one metric, its global scalar distance can obscure transient, localized structural reorganizations during dynamic phase transitions. To overcome this limitation, we present a hierarchical dynamic evaluation framework driven by a novel topological and hypergraph reconstruction strategy. Instead of directly interpolating abstract network parameters, our method interpolates the underlying spatial geometry and rigorously recomputes the valid topological structures, ensuring physical fidelity. Along this geodesic, we introduce a set of multi-scale indicators: macroscopic metrics (Topological Distortion and Persistence Entropy) to capture global shifts, and a novel mesoscopic dual-perspective Hypergraph Entropy (node-perspective and edge-perspective) to detect highly sensitive, asynchronous local rewirings. We further propagate the cycle-level entropy change onto individual vertices to form a point-level topological field. Extensive evaluations on physical dynamical systems (Rayleigh-Van der Pol limit cycles, Double-Well cluster fusion), high-dimensional biological aggregation (D'Orsogna model), and longitudinal stroke fMRI data demonstrate the utility of combining transport-based alignment with multi-scale entropy diagnostics for dynamic topological analysis.
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References · 14
- 2018Fused Gromov-Wasserstein distance for structured objects: theoretical foundations and mathematical propertiescited by 93
- 2020CO-Optimal Transportcited by 42
- 2018Large Scale computation of Means and Clusters for Persistence Diagrams using Optimal Transportcited by 32
- 2016Topological Data Analysiscited by 16
- 2021Scalar Field Comparison with Topological Descriptors: Properties and Applications for Scientific Visualizationcited by 14
- 2021Hypergraph Co-Optimal Transport: Metric and Categorical Propertiescited by 10
- 2019Gromov-Wasserstein Averaging in a Riemannian Frameworkcited by 9
- 2019Tensor Entropy for Uniform Hypergraphscited by 4
- 2023Flexible and Probabilistic Topology Tracking with Partial Optimal Transportcited by 4
- 2023Early warning indicators via latent stochastic dynamical systemscited by 3
- 2023Early Warning Prediction with Automatic Labeling in Epilepsy Patientscited by 2
- 2022Hypergraphs for multiscale cycles in structured datacited by 1
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