An Improved Clustering Algorithm for Multi-Density Data

Abstract

The clustering method divides a dataset into groups with similar data using similarity metrics. However, discovering clusters in different densities, shapes and distinct sizes is still a challenging task. In this regard, experts and researchers opt to use the DBSCAN algorithm as it uses density-based clustering techniques that define clusters of different sizes and shapes. However, it is misapplied to clusters of different densities due to its global attributes that generate a single density. Furthermore, most existing algorithms are unsupervised methods, where available prior knowledge is useless. To address these problems, this research suggests the use of a clustering algorithm that is semi-supervised. This allows the algorithm to use existing knowledge to generate pairwise constraints for clustering multi-density data. The proposed algorithm consists of two stages: first, it divides the dataset into different sets based on their density level and then applies the semi-supervised DBSCAN algorithm to each partition. Evaluation of the results shows the algorithm performing effectively and efficiently in comparison to unsupervised clustering algorithms.

Keywords

• clustering
• DBSCAN
• pairwise constraints
• multi-density data