Adaptive Fuzzy Leader Clustering of Complex Data Sets in Pattern Recognition

Most real data structures encountered in speech and image recognition and in medical and many other decision making tasks are quite complex in nature and rather difficult to organize for designing autonomous and optimal control and recognition systems. This paper presents a modular, unsupervised neural network architecture which can be used for clustering and classification of complex data sets. The adaptive fuzzy leader clustering (AFLC) architecture is a hybrid neural-fuzzy system which learns on-line in a stable and efficient manner. The system uses a control structure similar to that found in the adaptive resonance theory (ART-1) network to identify the cluster centers initially. The initial classification of an input takes place in a two-stage process: a simple competitive stage and a distance metric comparison stage. The cluster prototypes are then incrementally updated by relocating the centroid positions from fuzzy C-means (FCM) system equations for the centroids and the membership values. The operational characteristics of AFLC and the critical parameters involved in its operation are discussed. The performance of the AFLC algorithm is presented through application of the algorithm to the Anderson Iris data and laser-luminescent fingerprint image data. The AFLC algorithm successfully classifies features extracted from real data, discrete or continuous, indicating the potential strength of this new clustering algorithm in analyzing complex data sets.