# SAEN-BGS: Energy-Efficient Spiking AutoEncoder Network for Background Subtraction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.07336 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07336/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Event-based Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08405/) (2019)
- [Towards Principled Methods for Training Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.04862/) (2017)
- [Revisiting Batch Normalization for Training Low-latency Deep Spiking Neural Networks from Scratch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.01729/) (2020)
- [Bio-inspired digit recognition using reward-modulated spike-timing-dependent plasticity in deep convolutional networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00227/) (2018)
- [BSUV-Net: A Fully-Convolutional Neural Network for Background Subtraction of Unseen Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11371/) (2019)
- [Deeply-supervised Knowledge Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00675/) (2019)
- [Foreground Segmentation Using a Triplet Convolutional Neural Network for Multiscale Feature Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.02225/) (2018)
- [BSUV-Net 2.0: Spatio-Temporal Data Augmentations for Video-Agnostic Supervised Background Subtraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09585/) (2021)
- [ZBS: Zero-shot Background Subtraction via Instance-level Background Modeling and Foreground Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14679/) (2023)
- [WisenetMD: Motion Detection Using Dynamic Background Region Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09277/) (2018)
- [Background Subtraction with Real-time Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10020/) (2018)
- [3DFR: A Swift 3D Feature Reductionist Framework for Scene Independent Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11891/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Accuracy-Efficiency Trade-Offs in Spiking Neural Networks: A Lempel-Ziv Complexity Perspective on Learning Rules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06750/) (2025)
- [SMTrack: End-to-End Trained Spiking Neural Networks for Multi-Object Tracking in RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14607/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Background subtraction (BGS) is utilized to detect moving objects in a video and is commonly employed at the onset of object tracking and human recognition processes. Nevertheless, existing BGS techniques utilizing deep learning still encounter challenges with various background noises in videos, including variations in lighting, shifts in camera angles, and disturbances like air turbulence or swaying trees. To address this problem, we design a spiking autoencoder network, termed SAEN-BGS, based on noise resilience and time-sequence sensitivity of spiking neural networks (SNNs) to enhance the separation of foreground and background. To eliminate unnecessary background noise and preserve the important foreground elements, we begin by creating the continuous spiking conv-and-dconv block, which serves as the fundamental building block for the decoder in SAEN-BGS. Moreover, in striving for enhanced energy efficiency, we introduce a novel self-distillation spiking supervised learning method grounded in ANN-to-SNN frameworks, resulting in decreased power consumption. In extensive experiments conducted on CDnet-2014 and DAVIS-2016 datasets, our approach demonstrates superior segmentation performance relative to other baseline methods, even when challenged by complex scenarios with dynamic backgrounds.