Fuzzy Clustering with Repulsive Prototypes

A well known issue with prototype-based clustering is the user's obligation to know the right number of clusters in a dataset in advance or to determine it as a part of the data analysis process. There are different approaches to cope with this non-trivial problem. This paper follows the approach to address this problem as an integrated part of the clustering process. An extension to repulsive fuzzy c-means clustering is proposed equipping non-Euclidean prototypes with repulsive properties. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the feasibility of our technique.