HYBRID NEURAL NETWORK FOR PATTERN RECOGNITION

A system and a method for recognizing patterns comprises a first stage for xtracting features from inputted patterns and for providing topological representations of the characteristics of the inputted patterns and a second stage for classifying and recognizing the inputted patterns. The first stage comprises two one-layer neural networks and the second stage comprises a feedforward two-layer neural network. Supplying signals representative of a set of inputted patterns to the input layers of the first and second neural networks, training the first and second neural networks using a competitive learning algorithm, and generating topological representations of the input patterns using the first and second neural networks The method further comprises providing a third neural network for classifying and recognizing the inputted patterns and training the third neural network with a back-propagation algorithm so that the third neural network recognizes at least one interested pattern.