A Review of Clustering Algorithms for Clustering Uncertain Data

Clustering is an important task in the Data Mining. Clustering on uncertain data is a challenging in both modeling similarity between objects of uncertain data and developing efficient computational method. The most of the previous method for clustering uncertain data extends partitioning clustering methods and Density based clustering methods, which are based on geometrical distance between two objects. Such method cannot handle uncertain objects that are cannot distinguishable by using geometric properties and Distribution regarding to object itself is not considered. Probability distribution is an important characteristic is not considered during measuring similarity between two uncertain objects. The well known technique Kullbak-Leibler divergence used to measures the similarity between two uncertain objects. The goal of this paper is to provide detailed review about clustering uncertain data by using different methods & showing effectiveness of each algorithm

슬라이딩 윈도우상의 빠른 점진적 밀도 기반 클러스터링

학위논문(박사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 컴퓨터공학부, 2022. 8. 문봉기.Given the prevalence of mobile and IoT devices, continuous clustering against streaming data has become an essential tool of increasing importance for data analytics. Among many clustering approaches, density-based clustering has garnered much attention due to its unique advantage that it can detect clusters of an arbitrary shape when noise exists. However, when the clusters need to be updated continuously along with an evolving input dataset, a relatively high computational cost is required. Particularly, deleting data points from the clusters causes severe performance degradation. In this dissertation, the performance limits of the incremental density-based clustering over sliding windows are addressed. Ultimately, two algorithms, DISC and DenForest, are proposed. The first algorithm DISC is an incremental density-based clustering algorithm that efficiently produces the same clustering results as DBSCAN over sliding windows. It focuses on redundancy issues that occur when updating clusters. When multiple data points are inserted or deleted individually, surrounding data points are explored and retrieved redundantly. DISC addresses these issues and improves the performance by updating multiple points in a batch. It also presents several optimization techniques. The second algorithm DenForest is an incremental density-based clustering algorithm that primarily focuses on the deletion process. Unlike previous methods that manage clusters as a graph, DenForest manages clusters as a group of spanning trees, which contributes to very efficient deletion performance. Moreover, it provides a batch-optimized technique to improve the insertion performance. To prove the effectiveness of the two algorithms, extensive evaluations were conducted, and it is demonstrated that DISC and DenForest outperform the state-of-the-art density-based clustering algorithms significantly.모바일 및 IoT 장치가 널리 보급됨에 따라 스트리밍 데이터상에서 지속적으로 클러스터링 작업을 수행하는 것은 데이터 분석에서 점점 더 중요해지는 필수 도구가 되었습니다. 많은 클러스터링 방법 중에서 밀도 기반 클러스터링은 노이즈가 존재할 때 임의의 모양의 클러스터를 감지할 수 있다는 고유한 장점을 가지고 있으며 이에 따라 많은 관심을 받았습니다. 그러나 밀도 기반 클러스터링은 변화하는 입력 데이터 셋에 따라 지속적으로 클러스터를 업데이트해야 하는 경우 비교적 높은 계산 비용이 필요합니다. 특히, 클러스터에서의 데이터 점들의 삭제는 심각한 성능 저하를 초래합니다. 본 박사 학위 논문에서는 슬라이딩 윈도우상의 밀도 기반 클러스터링의 성능 한계를 다루며 궁극적으로 두 가지 알고리즘을 제안합니다. 첫 번째 알고리즘인 DISC는 슬라이딩 윈도우상에서 DBSCAN과 동일한 클러스터링 결과를 찾는 점진적 밀도 기반 클러스터링 알고리즘입니다. 해당 알고리즘은 클러스터 업데이트 시에 발생하는 중복 문제들에 초점을 둡니다. 밀도 기반 클러스터링에서는 여러 데이터 점들을 개별적으로 삽입 혹은 삭제할 때 주변 점들을 불필요하게 중복적으로 탐색하고 회수합니다. DISC 는 배치 업데이트로 이 문제를 해결하여 성능을 향상시키며 여러 최적화 방법들을 제안합니다. 두 번째 알고리즘인 DenForest 는 삭제 과정에 초점을 둔 점진적 밀도 기반 클러스터링 알고리즘입니다. 클러스터를 그래프로 관리하는 이전 방법들과 달리 DenForest 는 클러스터를 신장 트리의 그룹으로 관리함으로써 효율적인 삭제 성능에 기여합니다. 나아가 배치 최적화 기법을 통해 삽입 성능 향상에도 기여합니다. 두 알고리즘의 효율성을 입증하기 위해 광범위한 평가를 수행하였으며 DISC 및 DenForest 는 최신의 밀도 기반 클러스터링 알고리즘들보다 뛰어난 성능을 보여주었습니다.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overview of Dissertation 3 2 Related Works 7 2.1 Clustering 7 2.2 Density-Based Clustering for Static Datasets 8 2.2.1 Extension of DBSCAN 8 2.2.2 Approximation of Density-Based Clustering 9 2.2.3 Parallelization of Density-Based Clustering 10 2.3 Incremental Density-Based Clustering 10 2.3.1 Approximated Density-Based Clustering for Dynamic Datasets 11 2.4 Density-Based Clustering for Data Streams 11 2.4.1 Micro-clusters 12 2.4.2 Density-Based Clustering in Damped Window Model 12 2.4.3 Density-Based Clustering in Sliding Window Model 13 2.5 Non-Density-Based Clustering 14 2.5.1 Partitional Clustering and Hierarchical Clustering 14 2.5.2 Distribution-Based Clustering 15 2.5.3 High-Dimensional Data Clustering 15 2.5.4 Spectral Clustering 16 3 Background 17 3.1 DBSCAN 17 3.1.1 Reformulation of Density-Based Clustering 19 3.2 Incremental DBSCAN 20 3.3 Sliding Windows 22 3.3.1 Density-Based Clustering over Sliding Windows 23 3.3.2 Slow Deletion Problem 24 4 Avoiding Redundant Searches in Updating Clusters 26 4.1 The DISC Algorithm 27 4.1.1 Overview of DISC 27 4.1.2 COLLECT 29 4.1.3 CLUSTER 30 4.1.3.1 Splitting a Cluster 32 4.1.3.2 Merging Clusters 37 4.1.4 Horizontal Manner vs. Vertical Manner 38 4.2 Checking Reachability 39 4.2.1 Multi-Starter BFS 40 4.2.2 Epoch-Based Probing of R-tree Index 41 4.3 Updating Labels 43 5 Avoiding Graph Traversals in Updating Clusters 45 5.1 The DenForest Algorithm 46 5.1.1 Overview of DenForest 47 5.1.1.1 Supported Types of the Sliding Window Model 48 5.1.2 Nostalgic Core and Density-based Clusters 49 5.1.2.1 Cluster Membership of Border 51 5.1.3 DenTree 51 5.2 Operations of DenForest 54 5.2.1 Insertion 54 5.2.1.1 MST based on Link-Cut Tree 57 5.2.1.2 Time Complexity of Insert Operation 58 5.2.2 Deletion 59 5.2.2.1 Time Complexity of Delete Operation 61 5.2.3 Insertion/Deletion Examples 64 5.2.4 Cluster Membership 65 5.2.5 Batch-Optimized Update 65 5.3 Clustering Quality of DenForest 68 5.3.1 Clustering Quality for Static Data 68 5.3.2 Discussion 70 5.3.3 Replaceability 70 5.3.3.1 Nostalgic Cores and Density 71 5.3.3.2 Nostalgic Cores and Quality 72 5.3.4 1D Example 74 6 Evaluation 76 6.1 Real-World Datasets 76 6.2 Competing Methods 77 6.2.1 Exact Methods 77 6.2.2 Non-Exact Methods 77 6.3 Experimental Settings 78 6.4 Evaluation of DISC 78 6.4.1 Parameters 79 6.4.2 Baseline Evaluation 79 6.4.3 Drilled-Down Evaluation 82 6.4.3.1 Effects of Threshold Values 82 6.4.3.2 Insertions vs. Deletions 83 6.4.3.3 Range Searches 84 6.4.3.4 MS-BFS and Epoch-Based Probing 85 6.4.4 Comparison with Summarization/Approximation-Based Methods 86 6.5 Evaluation of DenForest 90 6.5.1 Parameters 90 6.5.2 Baseline Evaluation 91 6.5.3 Drilled-Down Evaluation 94 6.5.3.1 Varying Size of Window/Stride 94 6.5.3.2 Effect of Density and Distance Thresholds 95 6.5.3.3 Memory Usage 98 6.5.3.4 Clustering Quality over Sliding Windows 98 6.5.3.5 Clustering Quality under Various Density and Distance Thresholds 101 6.5.3.6 Relaxed Parameter Settings 102 6.5.4 Comparison with Summarization-Based Methods 102 7 Future Work: Extension to Varying/Relative Densities 105 8 Conclusion 107 Abstract (In Korean) 120박

Towards Optimal Execution of Density-based Clustering on Heterogeneous Hardware

Abstract Data Clustering is an important and highly utilized data mining technique in various application domains. With ever increasing data volumes in the era of big data, the efficient execution of clustering algorithms is a fundamental prerequisite to gain understanding and acquire novel, previously unknown knowledge from data. To establish an efficient execution, the clustering algorithms have to be re-engineered to fully exploit the provided hardware capabilities. Shared-memory multiprocessor systems like graphics processing units (GPUs) provide extremely high parallelism combined with a high bandwidth transfer at low cost. The availability of such computing units increases with upcoming processors, where a common CPU and various computing units, like GPU, are tightly coupled using a unified shared memory hierarchy. In this paper, we consider density-based clustering for such heterogeneous systems. In particular, we optimize the configuration of CUDA-DClust -a density-based clustering algorithm for GPUs -and show that our configuration approach enables an efficient and deterministic execution. Our configuration approach is based on data as well as hardware properties, so that we are able to adjust the algorithm execution in both directions. In our evaluation, we show the applicability of our approach and present open challenges which have to be solved next

Offline and Online Density Estimation for Large High-Dimensional Data

Density estimation has wide applications in machine learning and data analysis techniques including clustering, classification, multimodality analysis, bump hunting and anomaly detection. In high-dimensional space, sparsity of data in local neighborhood makes many of parametric and nonparametric density estimation methods mostly inefficient. This work presents development of computationally efficient algorithms for high-dimensional density estimation, based on Bayesian sequential partitioning (BSP). Copula transform is used to separate the estimation of marginal and joint densities, with the purpose of reducing the computational complexity and estimation error. Using this separation, a parallel implementation of the density estimation algorithm on a 4-core CPU is presented. Also, some example applications of the high-dimensional density estimation in density-based classification and clustering are presented. Another challenge in the area of density estimation rises in dealing with online sources of data, where data is arriving over an open-ended and non-stationary stream. This calls for efficient algorithms for online density estimation. An online density estimator needs to be capable of providing up-to-date estimates of the density, bound to the available computing resources and requirements of the application. In response to this, BBSP method for online density estimation is introduced. It works based on collecting and processing the data in blocks of fixed size, followed by a weighted averaging over block-wise estimates of the density. Proper choice of block size is discussed via simulations for streams of synthetic and real datasets. Further, with the purpose of efficiency improvement in offline and online density estimation, progressive update of the binary partitions in BBSP is proposed, which as simulation results show, leads into improved accuracy as well as speed-up, for various block sizes

A Novel Subspace Outlier Detection Approach in High Dimensional Data Sets

Many real applications are required to detect outliers in high dimensional data sets. The major difficulty of mining outliers lies on the fact that outliers are often embedded in subspaces. No efficient methods are available in general for subspace-based outlier detection. Most existing subspacebased outlier detection methods identify outliers by searching for abnormal sparse density units in subspaces. In this paper, we present a novel approach for finding outliers in the ‘interesting’ subspaces. The interesting subspaces are strongly correlated with `good\u27 clusters. This approach aims to group the meaningful subspaces and then identify outliers in the projected subspaces. In doing so, an extension to the subspacebased clustering algorithm is proposed so as to find the ‘good’ subspaces, and then outliers are identified in the projected subspaces using some classical outlier detection techniques such as distance-based and density-based algorithms. Comprehensive case studies are conducted using various types of subspace clustering and outlier detection algorithms. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can detect outliers effectively and efficiently in high dimensional data sets

Density-based algorithms for active and anytime clustering

Data intensive applications like biology, medicine, and neuroscience require effective and efficient data mining technologies. Advanced data acquisition methods produce a constantly increasing volume and complexity. As a consequence, the need of new data mining technologies to deal with complex data has emerged during the last decades. In this thesis, we focus on the data mining task of clustering in which objects are separated in different groups (clusters) such that objects inside a cluster are more similar than objects in different clusters. Particularly, we consider density-based clustering algorithms and their applications in biomedicine. The core idea of the density-based clustering algorithm DBSCAN is that each object within a cluster must have a certain number of other objects inside its neighborhood. Compared with other clustering algorithms, DBSCAN has many attractive benefits, e.g., it can detect clusters with arbitrary shape and is robust to outliers, etc. Thus, DBSCAN has attracted a lot of research interest during the last decades with many extensions and applications. In the first part of this thesis, we aim at developing new algorithms based on the DBSCAN paradigm to deal with the new challenges of complex data, particularly expensive distance measures and incomplete availability of the distance matrix. Like many other clustering algorithms, DBSCAN suffers from poor performance when facing expensive distance measures for complex data. To tackle this problem, we propose a new algorithm based on the DBSCAN paradigm, called Anytime Density-based Clustering (A-DBSCAN), that works in an anytime scheme: in contrast to the original batch scheme of DBSCAN, the algorithm A-DBSCAN first produces a quick approximation of the clustering result and then continuously refines the result during the further run. Experts can interrupt the algorithm, examine the results, and choose between (1) stopping the algorithm at any time whenever they are satisfied with the result to save runtime and (2) continuing the algorithm to achieve better results. Such kind of anytime scheme has been proven in the literature as a very useful technique when dealing with time consuming problems. We also introduced an extended version of A-DBSCAN called A-DBSCAN-XS which is more efficient and effective than A-DBSCAN when dealing with expensive distance measures. Since DBSCAN relies on the cardinality of the neighborhood of objects, it requires the full distance matrix to perform. For complex data, these distances are usually expensive, time consuming or even impossible to acquire due to high cost, high time complexity, noisy and missing data, etc. Motivated by these potential difficulties of acquiring the distances among objects, we propose another approach for DBSCAN, called Active Density-based Clustering (Act-DBSCAN). Given a budget limitation B, Act-DBSCAN is only allowed to use up to B pairwise distances ideally to produce the same result as if it has the entire distance matrix at hand. The general idea of Act-DBSCAN is that it actively selects the most promising pairs of objects to calculate the distances between them and tries to approximate as much as possible the desired clustering result with each distance calculation. This scheme provides an efficient way to reduce the total cost needed to perform the clustering. Thus it limits the potential weakness of DBSCAN when dealing with the distance sparseness problem of complex data. As a fundamental data clustering algorithm, density-based clustering has many applications in diverse fields. In the second part of this thesis, we focus on an application of density-based clustering in neuroscience: the segmentation of the white matter fiber tracts in human brain acquired from Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). We propose a model to evaluate the similarity between two fibers as a combination of structural similarity and connectivity-related similarity of fiber tracts. Various distance measure techniques from fields like time-sequence mining are adapted to calculate the structural similarity of fibers. Density-based clustering is used as the segmentation algorithm. We show how A-DBSCAN and A-DBSCAN-XS are used as novel solutions for the segmentation of massive fiber datasets and provide unique features to assist experts during the fiber segmentation process.Datenintensive Anwendungen wie Biologie, Medizin und Neurowissenschaften erfordern effektive und effiziente Data-Mining-Technologien. Erweiterte Methoden der Datenerfassung erzeugen stetig wachsende Datenmengen und Komplexit\"at. In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat sich daher ein Bedarf an neuen Data-Mining-Technologien f\"ur komplexe Daten ergeben. In dieser Arbeit konzentrieren wir uns auf die Data-Mining-Aufgabe des Clusterings, in der Objekte in verschiedenen Gruppen (Cluster) getrennt werden, so dass Objekte in einem Cluster untereinander viel \"ahnlicher sind als Objekte in verschiedenen Clustern. Insbesondere betrachten wir dichtebasierte Clustering-Algorithmen und ihre Anwendungen in der Biomedizin. Der Kerngedanke des dichtebasierten Clustering-Algorithmus DBSCAN ist, dass jedes Objekt in einem Cluster eine bestimmte Anzahl von anderen Objekten in seiner Nachbarschaft haben muss. Im Vergleich mit anderen Clustering-Algorithmen hat DBSCAN viele attraktive Vorteile, zum Beispiel kann es Cluster mit beliebiger Form erkennen und ist robust gegen\"uber Ausrei{\ss}ern. So hat DBSCAN in den letzten Jahrzehnten gro{\ss}es Forschungsinteresse mit vielen Erweiterungen und Anwendungen auf sich gezogen. Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit wollen wir auf die Entwicklung neuer Algorithmen eingehen, die auf dem DBSCAN Paradigma basieren, um mit den neuen Herausforderungen der komplexen Daten, insbesondere teurer Abstandsma{\ss}e und unvollst\"andiger Verf\"ugbarkeit der Distanzmatrix umzugehen. Wie viele andere Clustering-Algorithmen leidet DBSCAN an schlechter Per- formanz, wenn es teuren Abstandsma{\ss}en f\"ur komplexe Daten gegen\"uber steht. Um dieses Problem zu l\"osen, schlagen wir einen neuen Algorithmus vor, der auf dem DBSCAN Paradigma basiert, genannt Anytime Density-based Clustering (A-DBSCAN), der mit einem Anytime Schema funktioniert. Im Gegensatz zu dem urspr\"unglichen Schema DBSCAN, erzeugt der Algorithmus A-DBSCAN zuerst eine schnelle Ann\"aherung des Clusterings-Ergebnisses und verfeinert dann kontinuierlich das Ergebnis im weiteren Verlauf. Experten k\"onnen den Algorithmus unterbrechen, die Ergebnisse pr\"ufen und w\"ahlen zwischen (1) Anhalten des Algorithmus zu jeder Zeit, wann immer sie mit dem Ergebnis zufrieden sind, um Laufzeit sparen und (2) Fortsetzen des Algorithmus, um bessere Ergebnisse zu erzielen. Eine solche Art eines "Anytime Schemas" ist in der Literatur als eine sehr n\"utzliche Technik erprobt, wenn zeitaufwendige Problemen anfallen. Wir stellen auch eine erweiterte Version von A-DBSCAN als A-DBSCAN-XS vor, die effizienter und effektiver als A-DBSCAN beim Umgang mit teuren Abstandsma{\ss}en ist. Da DBSCAN auf der Kardinalit\"at der Nachbarschaftsobjekte beruht, ist es notwendig, die volle Distanzmatrix auszurechen. F\"ur komplexe Daten sind diese Distanzen in der Regel teuer, zeitaufwendig oder sogar unm\"oglich zu errechnen, aufgrund der hohen Kosten, einer hohen Zeitkomplexit\"at oder verrauschten und fehlende Daten. Motiviert durch diese m\"oglichen Schwierigkeiten der Berechnung von Entfernungen zwischen Objekten, schlagen wir einen anderen Ansatz f\"ur DBSCAN vor, namentlich Active Density-based Clustering (Act-DBSCAN). Bei einer Budgetbegrenzung B, darf Act-DBSCAN nur bis zu B ideale paarweise Distanzen verwenden, um das gleiche Ergebnis zu produzieren, wie wenn es die gesamte Distanzmatrix zur Hand h\"atte. Die allgemeine Idee von Act-DBSCAN ist, dass es aktiv die erfolgversprechendsten Paare von Objekten w\"ahlt, um die Abst\"ande zwischen ihnen zu berechnen, und versucht, sich so viel wie m\"oglich dem gew\"unschten Clustering mit jeder Abstandsberechnung zu n\"ahern. Dieses Schema bietet eine effiziente M\"oglichkeit, die Gesamtkosten der Durchf\"uhrung des Clusterings zu reduzieren. So schr\"ankt sie die potenzielle Schw\"ache des DBSCAN beim Umgang mit dem Distance Sparseness Problem von komplexen Daten ein. Als fundamentaler Clustering-Algorithmus, hat dichte-basiertes Clustering viele Anwendungen in den unterschiedlichen Bereichen. Im zweiten Teil dieser Arbeit konzentrieren wir uns auf eine Anwendung des dichte-basierten Clusterings in den Neurowissenschaften: Die Segmentierung der wei{\ss}en Substanz bei Faserbahnen im menschlichen Gehirn, die vom Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) erfasst werden. Wir schlagen ein Modell vor, um die \"Ahnlichkeit zwischen zwei Fasern als einer Kombination von struktureller und konnektivit\"atsbezogener \"Ahnlichkeit von Faserbahnen zu beurteilen. Verschiedene Abstandsma{\ss}e aus Bereichen wie dem Time-Sequence Mining werden angepasst, um die strukturelle \"Ahnlichkeit von Fasern zu berechnen. Dichte-basiertes Clustering wird als Segmentierungsalgorithmus verwendet. Wir zeigen, wie A-DBSCAN und A-DBSCAN-XS als neuartige L\"osungen f\"ur die Segmentierung von sehr gro{\ss}en Faserdatens\"atzen verwendet werden, und bieten innovative Funktionen, um Experten w\"ahrend des Fasersegmentierungsprozesses zu unterst\"utzen