Jing Lian

Fan Li, Dong Liang, Jing Lian et al.

Most current gait recognition methods suffer from poor interpretability and high computational cost. To improve interpretability, we investigate gait features in the embedding space based on Koopman operator theory. The transition matrix in this space captures complex kinematic features of gait cycles, namely the Koopman operator. The diagonal elements of the operator matrix can represent the overall motion trend, providing a physically meaningful descriptor. To reduce the computational cost of our algorithm, we use a reversible autoencoder to reduce the model size and eliminate convolutional layers to compress its depth, resulting in fewer floating-point operations. Experimental results on multiple datasets show that our method reduces computational cost to 1% compared to state-of-the-art methods while achieving competitive recognition accuracy 98% on non-occlusion datasets.

Zexiang Yi, Jing Lian, Yunliang Qi et al.

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) capture the information processing mechanism of the brain by taking advantage of spiking neurons, such as the Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) model neuron, which incorporates temporal dynamics and transmits information via discrete and asynchronous spikes. However, the simplified biological properties of LIF ignore the neuronal coupling and dendritic structure of real neurons, which limits the spatio-temporal dynamics of neurons and thus reduce the expressive power of the resulting SNNs. In this work, we leverage a more biologically plausible neural model with complex dynamics, i.e., a pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN), to improve the expressiveness and recognition performance of SNNs for vision tasks. The PCNN is a type of cortical model capable of emulating the complex neuronal activities in the primary visual cortex. We construct deep pulse-coupled neural networks (DPCNNs) by replacing commonly used LIF neurons in SNNs with PCNN neurons. The intra-coupling in existing PCNN models limits the coupling between neurons only within channels. To address this limitation, we propose inter-channel coupling, which allows neurons in different feature maps to interact with each other. Experimental results show that inter-channel coupling can efficiently boost performance with fewer neurons, synapses, and less training time compared to widening the networks. For instance, compared to the LIF-based SNN with wide VGG9, DPCNN with VGG9 uses only 50%, 53%, and 73% of neurons, synapses, and training time, respectively. Furthermore, we propose receptive field and time dependent batch normalization (RFTD-BN) to speed up the convergence and performance of DPCNNs.

Jizhao Liu, Jing Lian, J C Sprott et al.

Exploring and establishing artificial neural networks with electrophysiological characteristics and high computational efficiency is a popular topic in the field of computer vision. Inspired by the working mechanism of primary visual cortex, pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN) can exhibit the characteristics of synchronous oscillation, refractory period, and exponential decay. However, electrophysiological evidence shows that the neurons exhibit highly complex non-linear dynamics when stimulated by external periodic signals. This chaos phenomenon, also known as the " butterfly effect", cannot be explained by all PCNN models. In this work, we analyze the main obstacle preventing PCNN models from imitating real primary visual cortex. We consider neuronal excitation as a stochastic process. We then propose a novel neural network, called continuous-coupled neural network (CCNN). Theoretical analysis indicates that the dynamic behavior of CCNN is distinct from PCNN. Numerical results show that the CCNN model exhibits periodic behavior under DC stimulus, and exhibits chaotic behavior under AC stimulus, which is consistent with the results of real neurons. Furthermore, the image and video processing mechanisms of the CCNN model are analyzed. Experimental results on image segmentation indicate that the CCNN model has better performance than the state-of-the-art of visual cortex neural network models.