Recognition of handwritten musical notes by a modified Neocognitron

A neural network for recognition of handwritten musical notes, based on the well-known Neocognitron model, is described. The Neocognitron has been used for the “what” pathway (symbol recognition), while contextual knowledge has been applied for the “where” (symbol placement). This way, we benefit from dividing the process for dealing with this complicated recognition task. Also, different degrees of intrusiveness in “learning” have been incorporated in the same network: More intrusive supervised learning has been implemented in the lower neuron layers and less intrusive in the upper one. This way, the network adapts itself to the handwriting of the user. The network consists of a 13×49 input layer and three pairs of “simple” and “complex” neuron layers. It has been trained to recognize 20 symbols of unconnected notes on a musical staff and was tested with a set of unlearned input notes. Its recognition rate for the individual unseen notes was up to 93%, averaging 80% for all categories. These preliminary results indicate that a modified Neocognitron could be a good candidate for identification of handwritten musical notes.