A batch self-organizing maps algorithm based on adaptive distances

Abstract

Clustering methods aims to organize a set of items into clusters such that items within a given cluster have a high degree of similarity, while items belonging to different clusters have a high degree of dissimilarity. The self-organizing map (SOM) introduced by Kohonen is an unsupervised competitive learning neural network method which has both clustering and visualization properties, using a neighborhood lateral interaction function to discover the topological structure hidden in the data set. In this paper, we introduce a batch self-organizing map algorithm based on adaptive distances. Experimental results obtained in real benchmark datasets show the effectiveness of our approach in comparison with traditional batch self-organizing map algorithms.