Bayesian circles

The code presented in this post category is aimed at teaching myself how to use Bayesian approaches for various problems. In this particular post, the idea is to find the best circle fitting some observed points.

I started by using an approach assuming that the noise was only along the radius direction for each point. However, I found a paper from Marcus Baum related to the same problem ("A Novel Bayesian Method for Fitting a Circle to Noisy Points", available here) in which each measurement is assumed to have an isotropic Gaussian noise, and I later updated my code to also use a similar assumption.

If you are looking for a serious Bayesian method to fit a circle to noisy points, please read Marcus Baum's paper!

1 Helper function: generate random points from a circle

Let's write a helper function to produce random points sampled from a circle, with some isotropic Gaussian noise around each point:

randomCircle = function(n, x, y, radius, sd) {
    angles = runif(n, 0, 2 * pi)
    xPoints = radius * cos(angles) + x + rnorm(n, mean = 0, sd = sd)
    yPoints = radius * sin(angles) + y + rnorm(n, mean = 0, sd = sd)
    return(data.frame(x = xPoints,
		      y = yPoints))
}

Let's also write a simple function to draw circles:

drawCircle = function(x0, y0, radius, nSteps = 48, col = "black", ...) {
    gridAngles = seq(0, 2 * pi, length.out = nSteps + 1)[1:nSteps]
    gridX = x0 + cos(gridAngles) * radius
    gridY = y0 + sin(gridAngles) * radius
    polygon(gridX, gridY, border = col, ...)
}

And now some testing:

set.seed(4)
pts = randomCircle(100, 0, 0, 1, 0.1)
plot(pts, asp = 1, pch = 19, col = "red")
pts2 = randomCircle(100, 0, 0, 1, 0.02)
points(pts2, pch = 19, col = "cornflowerblue")

2 Likelihood of a circle for one given point

2.1 Log-likehood for one observed point

We need to be able to calculate the likelihood of a candidate circle (i.e. a center location and a radius) for a given, known point.

We assume that the observed point is distributed with an isotropic Gaussian noise around its true location, with a candidate standard deviation. The desired likelihood of the candidate circle and the candidate standard deviation can be calculated by summing over all the positions on the circle the likelihood of observing the given point under a Gaussian noise with the candidate standard deviation.

The following code calculates this (log-)likelihood by performing an approximate integration along the circle:

#' Calculate the log-likelihood of one circle (center and radius) for one
#' point with isotropic Gaussian noise around it
#' 
#' See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_function#Two-dimensional_Gaussian_function
#'
#' @param x x coordinate of the observed point
#' @param y y coordinate of the observed point
#' @param sd Spread of the Gaussian noise (sd = sigma_x = sigma_y)
#' @param x0 x coordinate of circle center
#' @param x0 y coordinate of circle center
#' @param radius Radius of the circle
#' @param nSteps Number of steps used for approximate integration along the
#'   circle
#'
loglikOnePoint = function(x, y, sd, x0, y0, radius, nSteps = 24) {
    gridAngles = seq(0, 2 * pi, length.out = nSteps + 1)[1:nSteps]
    gridX = x0 + cos(gridAngles) * radius
    gridY = y0 + sin(gridAngles) * radius
    lik = 0
    A = 1 / (2 * pi * sd^2) # Cf. volume under two-dimensional Gaussian
			    # function on Wikipedia page
    for (i in seq_along(gridX)) {
	dsquare = (x-gridX[i])^2 + (y-gridY[i])^2
	lik = lik + A * exp(- dsquare / (2*sd^2)) * 2 * pi * radius / nSteps
    }
    return(log(lik))
}

2.2 Log-likelihood for a set of observed points

The above function can be used to calculate the log-likelihood of a candidate circle and of a candidate standard deviation for a set of observed points:

loglikCircle = function(x, y, sd, x0, y0, radius, nSteps = 24) {
    #' x and y are vectors
    #'
    loglik = 0
    for (i in seq_along(x)) {
	loglik = loglik + loglikOnePoint(x[i], y[i], sd, x0, y0, radius, nSteps)
    }
    return(loglik)
}

where x and y are vectors with the coordinates of the observed points, and the other arguments are as above.

2.3 Example

set.seed(6)
# True parameters: center at (0, 0), radius = 10 and sd = 1
c = randomCircle(20, 0, 0, 10, 1)

# Candidate parameters: center at (1, 1), radius = 5, sd = 2
loglikCircle(c$x, c$y, 2, 1, 1, 5)
## [1] -102.2252

# Candidate parameters: center at (0, 0), radius = 5, sd = 2
loglikCircle(c$x, c$y, 2, 0, 0, 5)
## [1] -98.96428

# Candidate parameters: center at (0, 0), radius = 9, sd = 2
loglikCircle(c$x, c$y, 2, 0, 0, 9)
## [1] -37.41387

# Candidate parameters: center at (0, 0), radius = 9, sd = 1.2
loglikCircle(c$x, c$y, 1.2, 0, 0, 9)
## [1] -35.41297

3 MCMC algorithm

We use a Markov-chain Monte Carlo approach to generate a sample of the posterior distribution of the parameters (circle center, radius and standard deviation of Gaussian noise).

3.1 Generate the "observed" data

This is the "observed" data we are going to use as an input for our Bayesian modelling (the blue circle is the true circle used to generate the data):

set.seed(4)
circle = randomCircle(20, 4, 6, 12, 2)
plot(circle, asp = 1, bty = "n", las = 1, pch = 19, col = "pink")
drawCircle(4, 6, 12, col = "cornflowerblue", lwd = 2)

3.2 Initial parameters values and proposal distributions

There are four parameters in the model:

x0 and y0, coordinates of the circle center
radius, the radius of the circle
sd, the standard deviation of the Gaussian noise

3.2.1 Initial values

x0_init = function() { runif(1, -20, 20) }
y0_init = function() { runif(1, -20, 20) }
radius_init = function() { runif(1, 0, 20) }
sd_init = function() { runif(1, 0, 10) }

3.2.2 Proposal distributions

library(EnvStats)
x0_prop = function(x0) { rnorm(1, x0, 1) }
y0_prop = function(y0) { rnorm(1, y0, 1) }
radius_prop = function(radius) { EnvStats::rgammaAlt(1, radius, 0.2) }
radius_ratio = function(proposed, current) { 
  EnvStats::dgammaAlt(current, proposed, 0.2)/EnvStats::dgammaAlt(proposed, current, 0.2) }
sd_prop = function(sd) { EnvStats::rgammaAlt(1, sd, 0.2) }
sd_ratio = function(proposed, current) { 
  EnvStats::dgammaAlt(current, proposed, 0.2)/EnvStats::dgammaAlt(proposed, current, 0.2) }

3.3 MCMC run

Parameters for the MCMC run:

1
2
3

nSamples = 100 # Number of samples taken
nThin = 5      # Thinning between two samples
set.seed(4)

3.3.1 Initialize the chains

We store the four chains (for x0, y0, radius and sd) into a list. Each chain is initialized as a vector with length = nSamples, and the first value is generated by the initializing functions:

chains = list()
for (c in c("x0", "y0", "radius", "sd")) {
    chains[[c]] = vector(length = nSamples)
}
chains[["x0"]][1] = x0_init()
chains[["y0"]][1] = y0_init()
chains[["radius"]][1] = radius_init()
chains[["sd"]][1] = sd_init()

3.3.2 Actual MCMC run

For each iteration, we loop over the four parameters we are sampling. For each parameter, we generate a new candidate value from the proposal distribution, and we accept this value (or keep the previous one) depending on the likelihood of the proposed parameters compared to the previous likelihood.

for (i in 2:nSamples) {
    # Get the current parameter values
    currentX0 = chains[["x0"]][i-1]
    currentY0 = chains[["y0"]][i-1]
    currentRadius = chains[["radius"]][i-1]
    currentSd = chains[["sd"]][i-1]
    # Iterate for nThin iterations before recording the new parameter values
    for (j in 1:nThin) {
	# x0
	proposed = x0_prop(currentX0)
	prob = exp(loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = currentSd, 
				x0 = proposed, y0 = currentY0, 
				radius = currentRadius) -
		   loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = currentSd, 
				x0 = currentX0, y0 = currentY0, 
				radius = currentRadius))
	if (runif(1) &lt; prob) {
	    currentX0 = proposed
	}
	# y0
	proposed = y0_prop(currentY0)
	prob = exp(loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = currentSd,
				x0 = currentX0, y0 = proposed,
				radius = currentRadius) -
		   loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = currentSd,
				x0 = currentX0, y0 = currentY0, 
				radius = currentRadius))
	if (runif(1) &lt; prob) {
	    currentY0 = proposed
	}        
	# Radius
	proposed = radius_prop(currentRadius)
	prob = (exp(loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = currentSd,  
				 x0 = currentX0, y0 = currentY0,
				 radius = proposed) -
		    loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = currentSd,
				 x0 = currentX0, y0 = currentY0, 
				 radius = currentRadius)) *
		    radius_ratio(proposed, currentRadius))
	if (runif(1) &lt; prob) {
	    currentRadius = proposed
	}
	# sd
	proposed = sd_prop(currentSd)
	prob = (exp(loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = proposed, 
				 x0 = currentX0, y0 = currentY0,
				 radius = currentRadius) -
		    loglikCircle(circle$x, circle$y, sd = currentSd,
				 x0 = currentX0, y0 = currentY0, 
				 radius = currentRadius)) *
		    sd_ratio(proposed, currentSd))
	if (runif(1) &lt; prob) {
	    currentSd = proposed
	}
    }
    # Update the chains
    chains[["x0"]][i] = currentX0
    chains[["y0"]][i] = currentY0
    chains[["radius"]][i] = currentRadius
    chains[["sd"]][i] = currentSd
}

3.4 Results

The following graph shows the trajectory of the center during the MCMC iterations (grey line) and the corresponding circles (light blue). The true circle and the observed data are in red, the true center is at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal lines.

xlim = c(-20, 40)
ylim = c(-35, 25)
plot(0, type = "n", xlim = xlim, ylim = ylim, asp = 1,
     las = 1, bty = "n")
abline(h = 6, v = 4, col = "grey")
lines(chains[["x0"]], chains[["y0"]],
      col = adjustcolor("black", alpha.f = 0.3))
for (i in 1:nSamples) {
    drawCircle(chains[["x0"]][i], chains[["y0"]][i], chains[["radius"]][i],
	       col = adjustcolor("cornflowerblue", alpha.f = 0.1))
}
points(chains[["x0"]], chains[["y0"]], pch = 19, cex = 0.4,
       col = adjustcolor("cornflowerblue", alpha.f = 0.5))
points(circle, pch = 19, col = "red")
drawCircle(4, 6, 12, col = "red", lwd = 3)

We can see how the candidate circles in the MCMC chain converge close to the true circle quite rapidly. In this case there were quite many observed points to use for the MCMC run, examples below show how the method performs when less data points are available or when the noise is greater.

4 Other examples

4.1 Increased Gaussian noise

Here are the results for the same circle but with a standard deviation of 4 instead of 2 for the Gaussian noise:

4.2 Reduced observed dataset

In the following run the standard deviation for the Gaussian noise is back to 2, but only 10 points instead of 20 are observed:

And in this case, only 5 points are used:

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