Spatio-temporal feature maps using gated neuronal architecture

In this paper, Kohonen's self-organizing feature map is modified by a novel technique of allowing the neurons in the feature map to compete in a selective manner. The selective competition is achieved by grating the N-dimensional feature space using a spatial frequency and setting a criterion for the neurons to compete based on the region in which the input pattern resides. The spatial grating and selective competition are achieved by introducing a gated neuronal architecture in the feature map. As the selection criterion changes with time, it generates a time sequence of winning node indexes providing more input information and potentially allowing higher classification performance. These time sequences are then used to predict the class label of the input pattern more accurately. Three possible class label prediction algorithms are formulated based on evidential reasoning method and Bayes conditional probability theorem. These are tested on real world 8-class texture and a synthetic 12-class 3D object recognition problems. The classification performance is then compared with the results obtained by using a standard statistical linear discriminant analysis.