Improved pulse-coupled neural network for target segmentation in infrared images

This paper presents a new image segmentation algorithm based on the pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) and histogram method for infrared images. The proposed algorithm abandons entirely the mechanism of the time exponential decaying function and uses the results of the gray-level histogram analysis as the interior thresholds of PCNN, meanwhile, it keeps the advantage of briding small spatial gaps and minor intensity variations. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can get more complete region and edge information in infrared images. It is also of much lower complexity and of high speed than the original one.