Object recognition using saliency maps and HTM learning

In this paper a pattern classification and object recognition approach based on bio-inspired techniques is presented. It exploits the Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) topology, which imitates human neocortex for recognition and categorization tasks. The HTM comprises a hierarchical tree structure that exploits enhanced spatiotemporal modules to memorize objects appearing in various orientations. In accordance with HTM´s biological inspiration, human vision mechanisms can be used to preprocess the input images. Therefore, the input images undergo a saliency computation step, revealing the plausible information of the scene, where a human might fixate. The adoption of the saliency detection module releases the HTM network from memorizing redundant information and augments the classification accuracy. The efficiency of the proposed framework has been experimentally evaluated in the ETH-80 dataset, and the classification accuracy has been found to be greater than other HTM systems.