OPTOELECTRONIC THRESHOLDING MODULE FOR WINNER-TAKE-ALL OPERATIONS IN OPTICAL NEURAL NETWORKS

A simple optoelectronic architecture for carrying out optical threshol ding operations is proposed. The architecture is suitable for optical neural network implementations and for image processing. The module is based on liquid-crystal television, on a CCD camera, and on beam-samp ling optical components. The module does not need an additional light source, shows translation invariance, and does not break the beam prop agation path. Experimental results involving images and correlations a re presented. Finally, an architecture for an automatic winner-take-al l extractor for neural network architectures is proposed.