# Accurate and Efficient Event-based Semantic Segmentation Using Adaptive Spiking Encoder-Decoder Network

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11857 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11857/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 93 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Layer Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06450/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Xception: Deep Learning with Depthwise Separable Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02357/) (2016)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [Instance Normalization: The Missing Ingredient for Fast Stylization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08022/) (2016)
- [Surrogate Gradient Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09948/) (2019)
- [Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.7062/) (2014)
- [Spatio-Temporal Backpropagation for Training High-performance Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02609/) (2017)
- [Incorporating Learnable Membrane Time Constant to Enhance Learning of Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05785/) (2020)
- [Deep Residual Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04159/) (2021)
- [DSEC: A Stereo Event Camera Dataset for Driving Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06011/) (2021)
- [Going Deeper With Directly-Trained Larger Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.05280/) (2020)
- [Spikformer: When Spiking Neural Network Meets Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15425/) (2022)
- [SLAYER: Spike Layer Error Reassignment in Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.08646/) (2018)
- [Auto-DeepLab: Hierarchical Neural Architecture Search for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02985/) (2019)
- [Going Deeper in Spiking Neural Networks: VGG and Residual Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02627/) (2018)
- [Direct Training for Spiking Neural Networks: Faster, Larger, Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05793/) (2018)
- [Temporal Efficient Training of Spiking Neural Network via Gradient Re-weighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11946/) (2022)
- [SuperSpike: Supervised learning in multi-layer spiking neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.11146/) (2017)
- [Long short-term memory and learning-to-learn in networks of spiking neurons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09574/) (2018)
- [ParseNet: Looking Wider to See Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04579/) (2015)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Event-Based Optical Flow with Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01862/) (2021)
- [Event-based High Dynamic Range Image and Very High Frame Rate Video Generation using Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08230/) (2018)
- [EV-SegNet: Semantic Segmentation for Event-based Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12039/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Efficient Deep Spiking Multi-Layer Perceptrons with Multiplication-Free Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.12465/) (2023)
- [Automotive Object Detection via Learning Sparse Events by Spiking Neurons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12900/) (2023)
- [Event-aided Semantic Scene Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02334/) (2025)
- [Edge Intelligence with Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14069/) (2025)
- [Learning Flow-Guided Registration for RGB-Event Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01548/) (2025)
- [Asynchronous Bioplausible Neuron for SNN for Event Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11853/) (2023)
- [Weaving Light and Time: Unified Harmonic-Geometric Representation Learning for Dense RGB-Event Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09143/) (2026)
- [Event-Frame Fusion for Inter-Frame Segmentation via Event-Guided Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22500/) (2026)
- [Toward On-Chip Training of Spiking Neural Networks for Dense Event-Based Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32405/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Spiking neural networks (SNNs), known for their low-power, event-driven computation and intrinsic temporal dynamics, are emerging as promising solutions for processing dynamic, asynchronous signals from event-based sensors. Despite their potential, SNNs face challenges in training and architectural design, resulting in limited performance in challenging event-based dense prediction tasks compared to artificial neural networks (ANNs). In this work, we develop an efficient spiking encoder-decoder network (SpikingEDN) for large-scale event-based semantic segmentation tasks. To enhance the learning efficiency from dynamic event streams, we harness the adaptive threshold which improves network accuracy, sparsity and robustness in streaming inference. Moreover, we develop a dual-path Spiking Spatially-Adaptive Modulation module, which is specifically tailored to enhance the representation of sparse events and multi-modal inputs, thereby considerably improving network performance. Our SpikingEDN attains a mean intersection over union (MIoU) of 72.57% on the DDD17 dataset and 58.32% on the larger DSEC-Semantic dataset, showing competitive results to the state-of-the-art ANNs while requiring substantially fewer computational resources. Our results shed light on the untapped potential of SNNs in event-based vision applications. The source code will be made publicly available.