Recognition of coloured and textured images through a multi-scale neural architecture with orientational filtering and chromatic diffusion

The aim of this paper is to outline a multiple scale neural model to recognise colour images of textured scenes. This model combines colour and textural information in order to recognise colour texture images through the operation of two main components: a segmentation component composed of the colour opponent system (COS) and the chromatic segmentation system (CSS); and a recognition properties. Segmentation is achieved by perceptual contour extraction and diffusion processes on the colour opponent channels based on the human psychophysical theory of colour perception. This colour regions enhancement along with their local textural features constitutes the recognition pattern to be sent to the supervised neural classifier. The CSS accomplishes the colour region enhancement through a multiple scale loop of oriented filters and competition–cooperation mechanisms. Afterwards, the neural architecture performs an attentive recognition of the scene using those oriented filters responses and the chromatic diffusions. Some comparative tests with other models are included in order to prove the recognition capabilities of this neural architecture and how the use of colour information encourages the texture classification and the accuracy of the boundary detection. & 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.