Hybrid convolutional neural networks

Convolutional neural networks are known to outperform all other neural network models when classifying a wide variety of 2D-shapes. This type of networks supports a massively parallel extraction of low-level features in the processed images. Especially this characteristic is assumed to impact the performance of convolutional networks in character recognition tasks - and in particular when considering scaled, rotated, translated or otherwise deformed patterns. Yet training of convolutional networks is rather time-consuming due to the relatively high complexity of the entire model. To speed-up the training process, we will propose a new variant of convolutional networks - the so-called hybrid convolutional neural network (HCNN). HCNN-networks combine the original idea of LeCun´s convolutional networks with the benefits of RBF-like neurons in all the layers and with the winner-takes- all mechanism applied during recall. In the tests done so far in hand-written digit recognition, HCNN proved to be capable of considerably speeding-up the training process while maintaining roughly the same performance of the trained networks like original convolutional networks.