Local contrast as an effective means to robust clustering against varying densities

Abstract

Most density-based clustering methods have difficulties detecting clusters of hugely different densities in a dataset. A recent density-based clustering CFSFDP appears to have mitigated the issue. However, through formalising the condition under which it fails, we reveal that CFSFDP still has the same issue. To address this issue, we propose a new measure called Local Contrast, as an alternative to density, to find cluster centres and detect clusters. We then apply Local Contrast to CFSFDP, and create a new clustering method called LC-CFSFDP which is robust in the presence of varying densities. Our empirical evaluation shows that LC-CFSFDP outperforms CFSFDP and three other state-of-the-art variants of CFSFDP.