SPSM: A NEW HYBRID DATA CLUSTERING ALGORITHM FOR NONLINEAR DATA ANALYSIS

Abstract

Existing clustering algorithms, such as single-link clustering, k-means, CURE, and CSM are designed to find clusters based on predefined parameters specified by users. These algorithms may be unsuccessful if the choice of parameters is inappropriate with respect to the data set being clustered. Most of these algorithms work very well for compact and hyper-spherical clusters. In this paper, a new hybrid clustering algorithm called Self-Partition and Self-Merging (SPSM) is proposed. The SPSM algorithm partitions the input data set into several subclusters in the first phase and, then, removes the noisy data in the second phase. In the third phase, the normal subclusters are continuously merged to form the larger clusters based on the inter-cluster distance and intra-cluster distance criteria. From the experimental results, the SPSM algorithm is very efficient to handle the noisy data set, and to cluster the data sets of arbitrary shapes of different density. Several examples for color image show the versatility of the proposed method and compare with results described in the literature for the same images. The computational complexity of the SPSM algorithm is O(N2), where N is the number of data points.