Deep Image Clustering by Spiking Neural Networks

Andrew Mahyari, Hadi Aliakbarpour

Abstract: Neuromorphic cameras, or event cameras, are biologically-inspired sensors that detect changes in illumination at a pixel level, different from traditional cameras where each pixel independently and asynchronously outputs when it senses illumination changes. The neuromorphic cameras exhibit high-temporal resolution and dynamic range, useful in various applications. Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), mimicking biological neurons, are efficient in processing neuromorphic images due to their event-driven, low-power nature. However, training SNNs is challenging because of the non-differentiability of neuron models which require different optimization techniques. Inspired by recent works on unsupervised deep clustering in conventional deep learning, we introduce a novel deep clustering algorithm that employs SNNs to extract and group visual features from neuromorphic images into clusters. It utilizes an SNN …