Abstract

The human visual system demonstrates powerful image processing functionalities. Inspired by the visual system, a spiking neural network is proposed to segment visual images. The network is constructed in the two parts. The first part is a spiking neural network which is composed of photon receptors, cone and rod cells, and ON/OFF ganglion cells. Colour features can be extracted and passed through different ON/OFF pathways. The second part is a BP neural network which is trained to recognize the colour features and segment the visual image. The network has been successfully applied to segment leukocytes from blood smeared images.