Comparison of Adaptive Resonance Theory Neural Networks for Astronomical Region of Interest Detection and Noise Characterization

While learning algorithms have been used for astronomical data analysis, the vast majority of those algorithms have used supervised learning. In a continuation of the work described in Young et ah [18] we examine the use of unsupervised learning for this task with two types of Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) neural networks. Using synthetic astronomical data from SkyMaker[2], [3] which was designed to mimic the dynamic range of the CTI-[14] telescope, we compared the ability of the ART-1 neural network[4] and the ART-1 neural network with category theoretic modiflcation[9], [11] to detect regions of interest and to characterize noise. We show a difference in the geometries of the templates created by each architecture. We also show an analysis of the two architectures over a range of parameter settings. The results provided show that ART neural networks and unsupervised learning algorithms in general should not be overlooked for astronomical data analysis.