A neuromorphic architecture for cortical
multi-layer integration of early visual tasks.

Giacomo Indiveri, Luigi Raffo, Silvio P. Sabatini and Giacomo M. Bisio
DIBE - University of Genoa, Via Opera Pia 11a, 16145 Genova, ITALY

The characteristics and performances of a hierarchical neural architecture,
inspired by models of mammalian visual cortex, are considered.
The visual pathway from sensory space to the intermediate (cortical)
representation is structured in three layers, with intra and inter-layer
connections through feedforward and recurrent pathways.
These interconnections provide a complex perceptual organization that
integrates the specific functional tasks performed by each layer. This
improves the capabilities of the architecture in feature extraction and
segregation, further providing clues on the information content of the
intermediate representation (primal sketch).
Applications to preattentive vision tasks (edge and contour extractions,
texture analysis and boundary completion, and defect detection) are
presented with satisfactory results.