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A SOM prototype-based cluster analysis methodology

delete2017-12-01
delete35
PRE
AI
S
Soledad Delgado *
J
Jorge Calle-Espinosa
F
Federico Morán
F
Francisco Montero
DOI:10.1016/j.eswa.2017.06.022delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Data clustering is aimed at finding groups of data that share common hidden properties. These kinds of techniques are especially critical at early stages of data analysis where no information about the dataset is available. One of the mayor shortcomings of the clustering algorithms is the difficulty for non-experts users to configure them and, in some cases, interpret the results. In this work a computational approach with a two-layer structure based on Self-Organizing Map (SOM) is presented for cluster analysis. In the first level, a quantization of the data samples using topology-preserving metrics to automatically determine the number of units in the SOM is proposed. In the second level the obtained SOM prototypes are clustered by means of a connectivity analysis to explore the quality of the partitioning with different number of clusters. The most important benefit of this two-layer procedure is that computational load decreases considerably in comparison with data based clustering methods, making it possible to cluster large data sets and to consider several different clustering alternatives in a limited time. This methodology produces a two-dimensional map representation of the, usually, high dimensional input space, along with quantitative information on viable clustering alternatives, which facilitates the exploration of the possible partitions in a dataset. The efficiency and interpretation of the methodology is illustrated by its application to artificial, benchmark and real complex biological datasets. The experimental results demonstrate the ability of the method to identify possible segmentations in a dataset, compared to algorithms that only yield a single clustering solution. The proposed algorithm tackles the intrinsic limitations of SOM and the parameter settings associated with the clustering methodology, without requiring the number of clusters or the SOM architecture as a prerequisite, among others. This way, it makes possible its application even by researchers with a limited expertise in machine learning. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Self-organizing map
Clustering
Unsupervised
Topology preserving
Metabolic network
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Journal

Expert Systems with Applications cover
Expert Systems with Applications
IF:
7.5
Papers:
2.9W
Citations:
10.2W

Organization

U
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
Scholars:
1.4W
Papers: 1.2W
Citations: 10
C
Complutense University of Madrid
Scholars:
2.6W
Papers: 2.2W
Citations: 31