The maximum of a Gaussian random field was used by Worsley et al. (1992) to test for activation at an unknown point in positron emission tomography images of blood flow in the human brain. The Euler characteristic of excursion sets was used as an estimator of the number of regions of activation. The expected Euler characteristic of excursion sets of stationary Gaussian random fields has been derived by Adler and Hasofer (1976) and Adler (1981). In this paper we extend the results of Adler (1981) to χ2, F and t fields. The theory is applied to some three-dimensional images of cerebral blood flow from a study on pain perception.

This paper addresses the asymptotic analysis of sojourn functionals of spatiotemporal Gaussian random fields with long-range dependence (LRD) in time, also known as long memory. Specifically, reduction theorems are derived for local functionals of nonlinear transformation of such fields, with Hermite rank $m\geq 1,$ under general covariance structures. These results are proven to hold, in particular, for a family of nonseparable covariance structures belonging to the Gneiting class. For $m=2,$ under separability of the spatiotemporal covariance function in space and time, the properly normalized Minkowski functional, involving the modulus of a Gaussian random field, converges in distribution to the Rosenblatt-type limiting distribution for a suitable range of values of the long-memory parameter.

We study the Cramér type moderate deviation for partial sums of random fields by applying the conjugate method. The results are applicable to the partial sums of linear random fields with short or long memory and to nonparametric regression with random field errors.

By a general shot noise process we mean a shot noise process in which the counting process of shots is arbitrary locally finite. Assuming that the counting process of shots satisfies a functional limit theorem in the Skorokhod space with a locally Hölder continuous Gaussian limit process, and that the response function is regularly varying at infinity, we prove that the corresponding general shot noise process satisfies a similar functional limit theorem with a different limit process and different normalization and centering functions. For instance, if the limit process for the counting process of shots is a Brownian motion, then the limit process for the general shot noise process is a Riemann–Liouville process. We specialize our result for five particular counting processes. Also, we investigate Hölder continuity of the limit processes for general shot noise processes.

Studying the geometry generated by Gaussian and Gaussian-related random fields via their excursion sets is now a well-developed and well-understood subject. The purely non-Gaussian scenario has, however, not been studied at all. In this paper we look at three classes of stable random fields, and obtain asymptotic formulae for the mean values of various geometric characteristics of their excursion sets over high levels. While the formulae are asymptotic, they contain enough information to show that not only do stable random fields exhibit geometric behaviour very different from that of Gaussian fields, but they also differ significantly among themselves.

The distribution of the size of one connected component and the largest connected component of the excursion set is derived for stationary χ2, t and F fields, in the limit of high or low thresholds. This extends previous results for stationary Gaussian fields (Nosko 1969, Adler 1981) and for χ2 fields in one and two dimensions (Aronowich and Adler 1986, 1988). An application of this is to detect regional changes in positron emission tomography (PET) images of blood flow in human brain, using the size of the largest connected component of the excursion set as a test statistic.

We consider a continuous, infinitely divisible random field in ℝd , d = 1, 2, 3, given as an integral of a kernel function with respect to a Lévy basis with convolution equivalent Lévy measure. For a large class of such random fields, we compute the asymptotic probability that the excursion set at level x contains some rotation of an object with fixed radius as x → ∞. Our main result is that the asymptotic probability is equivalent to the right tail of the underlying Lévy measure.

We obtain a complete description of anisotropic scaling limits of the random grain model on the plane with heavy-tailed grain area distribution. The scaling limits have either independent or completely dependent increments along one or both coordinate axes and include stable, Gaussian, and ‘intermediate’ infinitely divisible random fields. The asymptotic form of the covariance function of the random grain model is obtained. Application to superimposed network traffic is included.

The main purpose of this paper is to define and characterize random fields of bounded variation, that is, random fields with sample paths in the space of functions of bounded variation, and to study their mean total variation. Simple formulas are obtained for the mean total directional variation of random fields, based on known formulas for the directional variation of deterministic functions. It is also shown that the mean variation of random fields with stationary increments is proportional to the Lebesgue measure, and an expression of the constant of proportionality, called the variation intensity, is established. This expression shows, in particular, that the variation intensity depends only on the family of two-dimensional distributions of the stationary increment random field. When restricting to random sets, the obtained results give generalizations of well-known formulas from stochastic geometry and mathematical morphology. The interest of these general results is illustrated by computing the variation intensities of several classical stationary random field and random set models, namely Gaussian random fields and excursion sets, Poisson shot noises, Boolean models, dead leaves models, and random tessellations.

The Minkowski functionals, including the Euler characteristic statistics, are standard tools for morphological analysis in cosmology. Motivated by cosmic research, we examine the Minkowski functional of the excursion set for an isotropic central limit random field, whose k-point correlation functions (kth-order cumulants) have the same structure as that assumed in cosmic research. Using 3- and 4-point correlation functions, we derive the asymptotic expansions of the Euler characteristic density, which is the building block of the Minkowski functional. The resulting formula reveals the types of non-Gaussianity that cannot be captured by the Minkowski functionals. As an example, we consider an isotropic chi-squared random field and confirm that the asymptotic expansion accurately approximates the true Euler characteristic density.