Face Recognition by Dynamic Link Matching

We present a neural system for the recognition of objects from realistic images, together with results of tests of face recognition from a large gallery. The system is inherently invariant with respect to shift, and is robust against many other variations, most notably rotation in depth and deformation. The system is based on Dynamic Link Matching. It consists of an image domain and a model domain, which we tentatively identify with primary visual cortex and infero-temporal cortex. Both domains have the form of neural sheets of hypercolumns, which are composed of simple feature detectors (modeled as Gabor-based wavelets). Each object is represented in memory by a separate model sheet, that is, a two-dimensional array of features. The match of the image to the models is performed by network self-organization, in which rapid reversible synaptic plasticity of the connections ("dynamic links") between the two domains is controlled by signal correlations, which are shaped by fixed inter-col..