Pulse Coupled Neural Network Model Research Articles

Image Fusion Method Based on Snake Visual Imaging Mechanism and PCNN.

The process of image fusion is the process of enriching an image and improving the image's quality, so as to facilitate the subsequent image processing and analysis. With the increasing importance of image fusion technology, the fusion of infrared and visible images has received extensive attention. In today's deep learning environment, deep learning is widely used in the field of image fusion. However, in some applications, it is not possible to obtain a large amount of training data. Because some special organs of snakes can receive and process infrared information and visible information, the fusion method of infrared and visible light to simulate the visual mechanism of snakes came into being. Therefore, this paper takes into account the perspective of visual bionics to achieve image fusion; such methods do not need to obtain a significant amount of training data. However, most of the fusion methods for simulating snakes face the problem of unclear details, so this paper combines this method with a pulse coupled neural network (PCNN). By studying two receptive field models of retinal nerve cells, six dual-mode cell imaging mechanisms of rattlesnakes and their mathematical models and the PCNN model, an improved fusion method of infrared and visible images was proposed. For the proposed fusion method, eleven groups of source images were used, and three non-reference image quality evaluation indexes were compared with seven other fusion methods. The experimental results show that the improved algorithm proposed in this paper is better overall than the comparison method for the three evaluation indexes.

Quantitative analysis of the effect of illumination variations on image processing in machine vision inspection

Abstract When unavoidable light, age, expression, and gesture changes occur, the machine vision detection accuracy will be greatly reduced, especially the light change impact on image processing. Combining the reflection equation and frequency domain analysis to construct a light change model based on spherical harmonic function and process the image from four directions, namely, digital image conversion, median filtering, sharpening processing, and image global segmentation. Aiming at the shortcomings of traditional image processing algorithms, the light compensation based on the improved pulse-coupled neural network model is proposed, and the model is used to analyze the impact of light changes on image processing. Despite the changes in light conditions, this algorithm maintains above 0.95 in each subset and has the best overall performance, as shown by the results. When the light intensity is less than 41.88kLux, using the optimal threshold for background segmentation of adult green peppers with respect to a fixed threshold T=0.3 results in a significant reduction of the background segmentation error. When the light intensity is greater than 41.88kLux, the superiority of the optimal threshold is not obvious. The results of this research not only have a significant role in promoting the development of the field of computer vision but also can provide people with convenient and efficient services in all aspects of social life.

PCNN orchard heterologous image fusion with semantic segmentation of significance regions

The apple fruits captured from red green and blue (RGB) color camera cannot be accurately identified and localized under natural scenes of orchards due to lighting and shading. We propose a pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) orchard heterogeneous image fusion model for semantic segmentation of saliency regions. The purpose of the model is to improve the accuracy of image segmentation and the quality of heterogeneous source image fusion in complex orchard scenes. The model fuses the time of flight (ToF) and RGB images acquired from orchard scenes. This model consists of an orchard image semantic segmentation module, a parameter optimization module, and a dual PCNN image fusion module. Image semantic segmentation module extracts the significant regions of fruit targets in orchard images. And then, in parameter optimization module, we introduce tent chaos and ranking strategies into human mental search algorithm to optimize the parameters of PCNN model. Finally, we complete the fusion through a dual PCNN module. Six fusion algorithms were used to evaluate the fusion quality of public and self-built datasets. The results showed that the chaotic hierarchical mental search algorithm could better solve the problem of difficult-to-determine PCNN parameters. The improved DeeplabV3 + could also segment clearer and more complete apple regions. Compared with other six fusion algorithms, the fusion experimental results show that the fused images with clearer targets and more prominent textures could be obtained in the proposed model. The proposed model reduces the influence of light and other disturbing factors in fruit recognition. And the fused image contains rich and accurate image information, which is more in line with the perception habit of human eyes.

A Novel Adaptively Optimized PCNN Model for Hyperspectral Image Sharpening

Hyperspectral satellite imagery has developed rapidly over the last decade because of its high spectral resolution and strong material recognition capability. Nonetheless, the spatial resolution of available hyperspectral imagery is inferior, severely affecting the accuracy of ground object identification. In the paper, we propose an adaptively optimized pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN) model to sharpen the spatial resolution of the hyperspectral imagery to the scale of the multispectral imagery. Firstly, a SAM-CC strategy is designed to assign hyperspectral bands to the multispectral bands. Subsequently, an improved PCNN (IPCNN) is proposed, which considers the differences of the neighboring neurons. Furthermore, the Chameleon Swarm Optimization (CSA) optimization is adopted to generate the optimum fusion parameters for IPCNN. Hence, the injected spatial details are acquired in the irregular regions generated by the IPCNN. Extensive experiments are carried out to validate the superiority of the proposed model, which confirms that our method can realize hyperspectral imagery with high spatial resolution, yielding the best spatial details and spectral information among the state-of-the-art approaches. Several ablation studies further corroborate the efficiency of our method.

Simulation analysis of visual perception model based on pulse coupled neural network

Pulse-coupled neural networks perform well in many fields such as information retrieval, depth estimation and object detection. Based on pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) theory, this paper constructs a visual perception model framework and builds a real image reproduction platform. The model firstly analyzes the structure and generalization ability of neural network multi-class classifier, uses the minimax criterion of feature space as the splitting criterion of visual perception decision node, which solves the generalization problem of neural network learning algorithm. In the simulation process, the initial threshold is optimized by the two-dimensional maximum inter-class variance method, and in order to improve the real-time performance of the algorithm, the fast recurrence formula of neural network is derived and given. The PCNN image segmentation method based on genetic algorithm is analyzed. The genetic algorithm improves the loop termination condition and the adaptive setting of model parameters of PCNN image segmentation algorithm, but the PCNN image segmentation algorithm still has the problem of complexity. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposed an IGA-PCNN image segmentation method combining the improved algorithm and PCNN model. Firstly, it used the improved immune genetic algorithm to adaptively obtain the optimal threshold, and then replaced the dynamic threshold in PCNN model with the optimal threshold, and finally used the pulse coupling characteristics of PCNN model to complete the image segmentation. From the coupling characteristics of PCNN, junction close space of image and gray level characteristics, it determined the local gray mean square error of image connection strength coefficient. The feature extraction and object segmentation properties of PCNN come from the spike frequency of neurons, and the number of neurons in PCNN is equal to the number of pixels in the input image. In addition, the spatial and gray value differences of pixels should be considered comprehensively to determine their connection matrix. Digital experiments show that the multi-scale multi-task pulse coupled neural network model can shorten the total training time by 17 h, improve the comprehensive accuracy of the task test data set by 1.04%, and shorten the detection time of each image by 4.8 s compared with the series network model of multiple single tasks. Compared with the traditional PCNN algorithm, it has the advantages of fast visual perception and clear target contour segmentation, and effectively improves the anti-interference performance of the model.

A pansharpening method combining iterative filtering and NSST-NSML-PAPCNN to optimize spatial detail extraction and injection

ABSTRACT Spatial injection-based pansharpening methods are prone to spatial or spectral distortions in pansharpening images due to insufficient extraction of spatial details and a mismatch between the amount of spatial detail information injected and the required amount. To this end, this paper proposes a pansharpening method that optimizes spatial detail extraction and injection. Firstly, a method to optimize the amount of spatial detail injection is proposed, that is, to extract the high-frequency information of the image through iterative filtering and determine the optimal number of iterations based on the global analysis of the method. Then, to fully extract and combine the spatial detail information of the source image, the detailed high-frequency image extracted corresponding to the optimal iterative filtering times is decomposed by non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST), and a new multi-scale sum-modified-Laplacian (NSML) as an external stimulus to a parameter-adaptive pulse-coupled neural network model (PAPCNN). A fusion rule based on multi-scale morphological gradients is designed to extract a small amount of detailed information for the low-frequency subband. The fused spatial detail image can be obtained by combining the fused low-frequency and high-frequency subbands and inverse NSST transformation. Finally, pansharpening can be realized by combining spatial detail image, injection coefficient, and MS image. In this paper, many experiments are carried out on the QuickBird, GeoEye-1, and WorldView-4 datasets, and quantitative and qualitative comparisons are made with eight advanced methods. Experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper can achieve better fusion results.

An improved pulse coupled neural networks model for semantic IoT

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gradually developed applications such as collecting sensory data and building intelligent services, which has led to an explosion in mobile data traffic. Meanwhile, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, semantic communication has attracted great attention as a new communication paradigm. However, for IoT devices, however, processing image information efficiently in real time is an essential task for the rapid transmission of semantic information. With the increase of model parameters in deep learning methods, the model inference time in sensor devices continues to increase. In contrast, the Pulse Coupled Neural Network (PCNN) has fewer parameters, making it more suitable for processing real-time scene tasks such as image segmentation, which lays the foundation for real-time, effective, and accurate image transmission. However, the parameters of PCNN are determined by trial and error, which limits its application. To overcome this limitation, an Improved Pulse Coupled Neural Networks (IPCNN) model is proposed in this work. The IPCNN constructs the connection between the static properties of the input image and the dynamic properties of the neurons, and all its parameters are set adaptively, which avoids the inconvenience of manual setting in traditional methods and improves the adaptability of parameters to different types of images. Experimental segmentation results demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed self-adaptive parameter setting method of IPCNN on the gray images and natural images from the Matlab and Berkeley Segmentation Datasets. The IPCNN method achieves a better segmentation result without training, providing a new solution for the real-time transmission of image semantic information.

A novel SAR and optical image fusion algorithm based on an improved SPCNN and phase congruency information

ABSTRACT The noise and significant spectral differences lead to severe spectral and spatial information distortions in the fusion result of SAR and optical images. We propose a fusion method based on phase congruency information and an improved, simplified pulse-coupled neural network (PC-SPCNN). The PC-SPCNN method builds the basic fusion framework based on the generalized intensity-hue-saturation transform (GIHS) and nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT). When fusing low-frequency coefficients, a fusion method that couples phase congruency and gain injection is adopted to reduce the spectral distortion caused by nonlinear radiometric differences between images. Meanwhile, an improved, simplified pulse-coupled neural network model is used to fuse the high-frequency coefficients of SAR and optical images. Three groups of multi-source, multi-scale, and multi-scene remote sensing images are used to verify the feasibility of PC-SPCNN and compared with existing fusion algorithms. The results indicate that the PC-SPCNN is superior to existing algorithms in both visual effect and objective evaluation and has better fusion performance.

Parameter adaptive unit-linking pulse coupled neural network based MRI–PET/SPECT image fusion

Medical image fusion has many applications to healthcare that is accomplished by extracting and then combining the complementary information from multiple medical images into a single image. The pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) is greatly applied to image fusion due to its efficient coupling of surrounding neurons, but suffers from network complexity and manual parameter settings. This paper proposes a novel parameter adaptive unit-linking PCNN (PAULPCNN) model, whose parameters are automatically obtained from the external stimulus and exhibits a simpler structure than the original PCNN. The multi-scale decomposition-based methods, particularly based on the non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST), are widely employed by researchers to perform medical image fusion due to their efficient separation of spatial details at different scales. Motivated by the advantages of the PCNN and multi-scale decomposition-based methods, a hybrid medical image fusion method based on the PAULPCNN model is introduced in the NSST domain that merges the salient complementary details from a gray-scale and the corresponding pseudo-color medical image captured at different modalities to produce a more informative image that is more useful to medical experts in computer-aided diagnosis of diseases. The proposed method first employs NSST to transform the source images into a low-pass and several high-pass sub-bands, respectively. The high-pass sub-bands are combined using the firing times of the proposed PAULPCNN model, whereas a new distance-weighted regional energy-based rule is applied to construct the fused low-pass sub-band, which while estimating regional energy, assigns weight to different neighboring pixels depending on their distance from the central pixel. Finally, inverse NSST is applied on the fused sub-bands to construct the fused image. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is shown using the fusion results of eleven state-of-the-art methods on thirty gray-scale and pseudo-color brain medical image pairs comprising mild Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, motor neuron disease, sagittal plane, coronal plane, transaxial plane, and glioma image pairs, where eight objective metrics are considered for the quantitative assessment. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is competitive with the state-of-the-art methods, which even outperforms some of these methods by providing fused images with better visual quality and greater objective performance, which are more suitable for specialists to diagnose brain diseases.

Image Large Rotation and Scale Estimation Using the Gabor Filter

This paper proposes a novel image large rotation and scale estimation method based on the Gabor filter and pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN). First, the Gabor features of the template image and its rotated one are extracted by performing the Gabor filter. Second, we present a modified PCNN model to measure the similarity between the Gabor features of the image and its rotated one. Finally, the rotation angle is calculated by searching the global minimum of the correlation coefficients. Besides rotation estimation, we also propose a scale estimation method based on the max-projection strategy. The Gabor feature image is projected along the estimated rotation angle, and the scale is calculated by searching the peak of this projection result. Moreover, experiments illustrate that the proposed method has high accuracy on rotation and scale estimation and is robust to noise. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, the proposed approach has a more stable performance.

Parameter adaptive unit-linking dual-channel PCNN based infrared and visible image fusion

The properties like pulse synchronization of neurons and global coupling greatly motivated researchers to apply pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) models in accomplishing image fusion. However, manual adjustment of its parameters negatively affects the fusion performance. Moreover, it can process one image at a time. A new parameter adaptive unit-linking dual-channel PCNN model that exhibits all the properties of PCNN and processes two images simultaneously is used in this work to implement a novel fusion algorithm in the non-subsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) domain for the integration of infrared and visible images. At the same time, all the parameters of the proposed model are automatically estimated from the source images. The infrared and visible images are first decomposed using NSCT to provide a sequence of band-pass directional sub-bands and a low-pass sub-band, respectively. The band-pass directional sub-bands are fused using fractal dimension-based linking strength, while the low-pass sub-bands are combined using a new linking strength based on the multi-scale morphological gradient of coefficients. Lastly, the fused image is constructed from the fused sub-bands by applying inverse NSCT. Fourteen state-of-the-art methods are adopted for comparing the performance of the proposed method. The qualitative comparison is done using the human visual system, whereas six objective metrics are considered for the quantitative evaluation. The proposed method is competitive and outperforms some of the existing methods, according to the results of the experiments.

A retinal blood vessel segmentation based on improved D-MNet and pulse-coupled neural network

The pathological changes of the retina are closely related to many human diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes. In clinical medicine, the pathological conditions of retinal blood vessels are usually used to diagnose a variety of related diseases in the human body. Retinal blood vessel segmentation is the basis of such medical diagnosis and plays an important role in the screening and diagnosis of related diseases. However, the current retinal vessel segmentation methods have low accuracy and poor connectivity in the blood vessel segmentation. In this paper, we propose a new segmentation algorithm based on a multi-scale attention with a residual mechanism D-Mnet (Deformable convolutional M-shaped Network), combined with an improved PCNN (Pulse-Coupled Neural Network) model. The network in the proposed algorithm is mainly based on the encoder-decoder network structure, and introduces a deformable convolutional model and a multi-scale attention module with residual mechanism to improve the accuracy of the capillary segmentation and the connectivity of general blood vessel segmentation. At the same time, our network combines an improved PCNN model, is order to bring together the advantages of supervised and unsupervised learning to improve the performance of retinal blood vessel segmentation. We use fundus images from four public databases, DRIVE, STARE, CHASE_DB1 and HRF, to conduct comparative verification of our algorithm. Experimental results of our algorithm show that the detection accuracy of the retinal blood vessel segmentation from the four databases reach 96.83%, 97.32%, 97.14% and 96.68% respectively. The segmentation performance of the algorithm in this paper is better than that of most existing algorithms.

Multi-Focus Image Fusion Method Based on Multi-Scale Decomposition of Information Complementary.

Multi-focus image fusion is an important method used to combine the focused parts from source multi-focus images into a single full-focus image. Currently, to address the problem of multi-focus image fusion, the key is on how to accurately detect the focus regions, especially when the source images captured by cameras produce anisotropic blur and unregistration. This paper proposes a new multi-focus image fusion method based on the multi-scale decomposition of complementary information. Firstly, this method uses two groups of large-scale and small-scale decomposition schemes that are structurally complementary, to perform two-scale double-layer singular value decomposition of the image separately and obtain low-frequency and high-frequency components. Then, the low-frequency components are fused by a rule that integrates image local energy with edge energy. The high-frequency components are fused by the parameter-adaptive pulse-coupled neural network model (PA-PCNN), and according to the feature information contained in each decomposition layer of the high-frequency components, different detailed features are selected as the external stimulus input of the PA-PCNN. Finally, according to the two-scale decomposition of the source image that is structure complementary, and the fusion of high and low frequency components, two initial decision maps with complementary information are obtained. By refining the initial decision graph, the final fusion decision map is obtained to complete the image fusion. In addition, the proposed method is compared with 10 state-of-the-art approaches to verify its effectiveness. The experimental results show that the proposed method can more accurately distinguish the focused and non-focused areas in the case of image pre-registration and unregistration, and the subjective and objective evaluation indicators are slightly better than those of the existing methods.

High-resolution SAR images segmentation using NSCT denoising and QIGA based parameters selection of PCNN model

The high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images usually contain inhomogeneous coherent speckle noises. For the high-resolution SAR image segmentation with such noises, the conventional methods based on pulse coupled neural networks (PCNN) have to face heavy parameters with a low efficiency. In order to solve the problems, this paper proposes a novel SAR image segmentation algorithm based on non-subsampling Contourlet transform (NSCT) denoising and quantum immune genetic algorithm (QIGA) improved PCNN models. The proposed method first denoising the SAR images for a pre-processing based on NSCT. Then, by using the QIGA to select parameters for the PCNN models, such models self-adaptively select the suitable parameters for segmentation of SAR images with different scenes. This method decreases the number of parameters in the PCNN models and improves the efficiency of PCNN models. At last, by using the optimal threshold to binary the segmented SAR images, the small objects and large scales from the original SAR images will be segmented. To validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, four different comparable experiments are applied to validate the proposed algorithm. Experimental results have shown that NSCT pre-processing has a better performance for coherent speckle noises suppression, and QIGA-PCNN model based on denoised SAR images has an obvious segmentation performance improvement on region consistency and region contrast than state-of-the-arts methods. Besides, the segmentation efficiency is also improved than conventional PCNN model, and the level of time complexity meets the state-of-the-arts methods. Our proposed NSCT+QIGA-PCNN model can be used for small object segmentation and large scale segmentation in high-resolution SAR images. The segmented results will be further used for object classification and recognition, regions of interest extraction, and moving object detection and tracking.

A new image segmentation method based on the ICSO-ISPCNN model

To address the issue of parameter settings in a pulse coupled neural network (PCNN), we propose a new image segmentation method based on the improved chicken swarm optimization algorithm and improved simplified PCNN (ICSO-ISPCNN) model. First, we improved a simplified PCNN model by modifying the dynamic threshold function and meanwhile improved the chicken swarm optimization (CSO) algorithm by introducing the survival of the fittest mechanism. Then, a product cross entropy is utilized as the fitness function of the ICSO algorithm, and the parameter values of the ISPCNN model are determined through the effective teamwork of roosters, hens, and chicks in the chicken swarm. Finally, we can achieve the automatic image segmentation via the ISPCNN model, which has the best parameter values. The detailed experiments indicate that our method has more superior performance in terms of convergence and segmentation accuracy than methods based on the genetic algorithm and ant colony optimization algorithm.

An Improved Pulse-Coupled Neural Network Model for Pansharpening.

Pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN) and its modified models are suitable for dealing with multi-focus and medical image fusion tasks. Unfortunately, PCNNs are difficult to directly apply to multispectral image fusion, especially when the spectral fidelity is considered. A key problem is that most fusion methods using PCNNs usually focus on the selection mechanism either in the space domain or in the transform domain, rather than a details injection mechanism, which is of utmost importance in multispectral image fusion. Thus, a novel pansharpening PCNN model for multispectral image fusion is proposed. The new model is designed to acquire the spectral fidelity in terms of human visual perception for the fusion tasks. The experimental results, examined by different kinds of datasets, show the suitability of the proposed model for pansharpening.

Application of deep learning model based on image definition in real-time digital image fusion

This paper focuses on pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) and digital image fusion. Aiming at the existing problems, this paper proposes a real-time deep learning model with dual-channel PCNN fusion algorithm based on image definition. It will also be helpful to digital image forensics. With the integration of the orthogonal color space that conforms to HVS, this algorithm simplifies the traditional PCNN model to a parallel dual-channel adaptive PCNN structure. Also, it can realize the adaptive processing by defining the image definition to be β, the coupled linking coefficient. As the dynamic threshold can be increased exponentially with this method, it can effectively solve the problems. The experimental result proves that our algorithm outperforms the traditional fusion algorithms according to the subjective visual effect or the objective assessment standard.

An Improved Non-coupled PCNN Model for Image Segmentation

Pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN) model is widely used in digital image processing, but it is always a difficult problem to set network parameters and determine the optimal segmentation. By analyzing the firing characteristics and network parameters setting for the non-coupled linking PCNN, we propose an improved non-coupled linking PCNN for image segmentation. The model introduce the coupling effect of neighboring neurons into the dynamic threshold subsystem, and using a combination of DNN network, manual adjusting on step length for setting the dynamic threshold initial value. When the dynamic threshold initial value is adjusted properly, the optimal segmentation for the image can be obtained. Using the proposed algorithm in image segmentation of Lena and mammographic images, the segmentation effect similar to that of the traditional model can be obtained by less iteration, and it shows faster speed and better robustness.

BRIDGE PAVEMENT CRACK DETECTION UNDER UNEVEN ILLUMINATION USING IMPROVED PCNN ALGORITHM

Abstract. For bridge pavement cracks under uneven illumination, the existing image segmentation algorithm does not remove this effect, and the segmentation effect is affected. In this paper, the image preprocessing consists of two parts: the process of removing uneven illumination and image noise, and the traditional bilateral filtering is improved based on the stationary wavelet algorithm (Cross-bilateral filtering). In the image segmentation part, the traditional PCNN (Pulse Coupled Neural Network) model parameters and the number of iterations are difficult to determine reasonably, and the use of a certain complexity makes it difficult to automate. This paper combined the synaptic integration characteristics of neurons, image gray and spatial features, to simplify PCNN model. The improved PCNN algorithm (SPCNN) based on the gray threshold of Markov network directly completes the segmentation without the need to manually set parameters and determine the optimal number of iterations. Through the analysis of the experimental results, the following three conclusions were drawn. (1) Compared with the histogram equalization, the enhancement algorithm of this paper removed the influence of illumination well and had advantages for the subsequent segmentation processing. (2)The cross-bilateral filtering algorithm could improve the image signal-to- noise ratio from 18.855 to 32.037, which was better than the original bilateral filtering algorithm. (3) The average segmentation accuracy rate of segmentation of SPCNN algorithm was more that 90%. Compared with the traditional PCNN method, this method is better in subjective visual effects and objective segmentation performance, less time consuming.

Medical-image-fusion algorithm based on a detail-enhanced and pulse-coupled neural-network model stimulated by parallel features

The purpose of medical-image fusion is to integrate the comprehensive information of multimodal medical images into a single image, which is helpful for clinical diagnosis, increasing the accuracy of disease observation by physicians, and shortening the treatment period. A new fusion algorithm for anatomical and functional images is proposed in this paper. Local Laplacian filtering (LLF) is chosen as the decomposition tool in the fusion process, which can enhance the details, protect the edges, and ensure that the details of the anatomical features in the fused images cannot be covered by the color information of the functional images. The steps of this algorithm are as follows: firstly, LLF decomposes the original image into an approximate image and a series of detailed images. Secondly, for the approximate image, this paper proposes a fusion rule for an improved local-energy maximum by combining the regional and edge energies. For detailed images, the parameter-adaptive simplified-pulse-coupled neural-network (PA-SPCNN) model is used to fuse the detailed images. The novel sum-modified-Laplacian and color-saliency feature are selected as external-stimulus inputs of the PA-SPCNN model in the anatomical and functional images, respectively. Finally, the fusion image is obtained by an inverse-LLF transform. Simulation experiments show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the classical algorithm in subjective and objective evaluation.