In this paper, a novel procedure for normalising Mercer kernel is suggested firstly. Then, the normalised Mercer kernel techniques are applied to the fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm, which leads to a normalised kernel based FCM (NKFCM) clustering algorithm. In the NKFCM algorithm, implicit assumptions about the shapes of clusters in the FCM algorithm is removed so that the new algorithm possesses strong adaptability to cluster structures within data samples. Moreover, a new method for calculating the prototypes of clusters in input space is also proposed, which is essential for data clustering applications. Experimental results on several benchmark datasets have demonstrated the promising performance of the NKFCM algorithm in different scenarios. </jats:p
