Hebbian-based neural networks for bottom-up visual attention and its applications to ship detection in SAR images

This paper proposes a bottom-up attention model based on pulsed Hebbian neural networks. The salience of the visual input can be generated through the networks using a simple normalization process, which can be calculated rapidly. Moreover, visual salience in this model can be represented as binary codes that mimic neuronal pulses in the human brain. Experimental results on psychophysical patterns and eye fixation prediction for natural images prove the effectiveness and efficiency of the model. In an arduous task of detecting ships in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, there are large amounts of data to be processed in real time. As a fast and effective technique for saliency detection, the proposed model is applied to ship detection in SAR images and its robustness against speckles is further proved.