Classification of natural images inspired by the human visual system

Abstract

In this paper, a three-step model based on the integration of Deep Neural Networks (DNN) and Decision Models is introduced for image classification which is inspired by the human visual system. To make a decision about an object, many actions should be done in a hierarchical process in the brain. First, the retina receives visual stimuli and transfers them to the visual cortex in the brain. The information extracted in the visual cortex, is accumulated over time to select an appropriate response. Many of the current decision-making models do not show how each image is converted into useful information for the decision model. Some models have used neural networks to convert each image into the information needed in the decision-making model; however, the role of the retina is ignored among these models. In this paper, a combination of retina inspired filters, CNN-based description and accumulator-based decision model is used to classify images. This model’s structure resembles the human brain due to the usage of the DoG filter bank as retina inspired filter in the first stage of it. This model shows a significant improvement in accuracy in comparison to other models; furthermore, its performance is acceptable even with the small sample training set.