A generalization of Possibilistic Fuzzy C-Means Method for Statistical Clustering of Data

Abstract

The Fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm has been widely used in the field of clustering and classification but has encountered difficulties with noisy data and outliers. Other versions of algorithms related to possibilistic theory have given good results, such as Fuzzy C-Means(FCM), possibilistic C-means (PCM), Fuzzy possibilistic C-means (FPCM) and possibilistic fuzzy C-Means algorithm (PFCM).This last algorithm works effectively in some environments but encountered more shortcomings with noisy databases. To solve this problem, we propose in this manuscript, a new algorithm named Improved Possibilistic Fuzzy C-Means (ImPFCM) by combining the PFCM algorithm with a very powerful statistical method. The properties of this new ImPFCM algorithm show that it is not only applicable on clusters of spherical shapes, but also on clusters of different sizes and densities. The results of the comparative study with very recent algorithms indicate the performance and the superiority of the proposed approach to easily group the datasets in a large-dimensional space and to use not only the Euclidean distance but more sophisticated standards norms, capable to deal with much more complicated problems. On the other hand, we have demonstrated that the ImPFCM algorithm is also capable of detecting the cluster center with high accuracy and performing satisfactorily in multiple environments with noisy data and outliers.