A recognition of filaments in solar images with an artificial neural network

A new technique based on the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was developed for an automated recognition of solar filaments, dark elongated fea tures visible in the hydrogen H-alpha line full disk spectroheliograms. The ANN was trained on a single fragment containing the filament elements de picted on a local background and then tested on the other 54 image fragments depicting filaments on the backgrounds with variations in brightness. Despite the difference in backgrounds, the ANN has properly recognized filaments in all the testing image fragments. This technique can be extended for an auto mated recognition of solar filaments in the existing solar catalogues.