A new technique based on the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was developed for an automated recognition of solar filaments, dark elongated features visible in the hydrogen H-alpha line full disk spectroheliograms. The ANN was trained on a single fragment containing the filament elements depicted 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 automated recognition of solar filaments in the existing solar catalogues.
Valentina V. Zharkova, Vitaly Schetinin