A semantic segmentation method integrated convolutional nonlinear spiking neural model with Transformer

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Semantic segmentation is a critical task in computer vision, with significant applications in areas like autonomous driving and medical imaging. Transformer-based methods have gained considerable attention recently because of their strength in capturing global information. However, these methods often sacrifice detailed information due to the lack of mechanisms for local interactions. Similarly, convolutional neural network (CNN) methods struggle to capture global context due to the inherent limitations of convolutional kernels. To overcome these challenges, this paper introduces a novel Transformer-based semantic segmentation method called NSNPFormer, which leverages the nonlinear spiking neural P (NSNP) system—a computational model inspired by the spiking mechanisms of biological neurons. The NSNPFormer employs an encoding–decoding structure with two convolutional NSNP components and a residual connection channel. The convolutional NSNP components facilitate nonlinear local feature extraction and block-level feature fusion. Meanwhile, the residual connection channel helps prevent the loss of feature information during the decoding process. Evaluations on the ADE20K and Pascal Context datasets show that NSNPFormer achieves mIoU scores of 53.7 and 58.06, respectively, highlighting its effectiveness in semantic segmentation tasks.