A genetic graph-based clustering algorithm

Abstract

The interest in the analysis and study of clustering techniques have grown since the introduction of new algorithms based on the continuity of the data, where problems related to image segmentation and tracking, amongst others, makes difficult the correct classification of data into their appropriate groups, or clusters. Some new techniques, such as Spectral Clustering (SC), uses graph theory to generate the clusters through the spectrum of the graph created by a similarity function applied to the elements of the database. The approach taken by SC allows to handle the problem of data continuity though the graph representation. Based on this idea, this study uses genetic algorithms to select the groups using the same similarity graph built by the Spectral Clustering method. The main contribution is to create a new algorithm which improves the robustness of the Spectral Clustering algorithm reducing the dependency of the similarity metric parameters that currently affects to the performance of SC approaches. This algorithm, named Genetic Graph-based Clustering (GGC), has been tested with different synthetic and real-world datasets, the experimental results have been compared against classical clustering algorithms like K-Means, EM and SC. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.