Image Reconstruction from Neuromorphic Event Cameras using Laplacian-Prediction and Poisson Integration with Spiking and Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

Event cameras are robust neuromorphic visual sensors, which communicate transients in luminance as events. Current paradigm for image reconstruction from event data relies on direct optimization of artificial Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Here we proposed a two-phase neural network, which comprises a CNN, optimized for Laplacian prediction followed by a Spiking Neural Network (SNN) optimized for Poisson integration. By introducing Laplacian prediction into the pipeline, we provide image reconstruction with a network comprising only 200 parameters. We converted the CNN to SNN, providing a full neuromorphic implementation. We further optimized the network with Mish activation and a novel convoluted CNN design, proposing a hybrid of spiking and artificial neural network with < 100 parameters. Models were evaluated on both N-MNIST and N-Caltech101 datasets.