Shadowed c-means: Integrating fuzzy and rough clustering

A new method of partitive clustering is developed in the framework of shadowed sets. The core and exclusion regions of the generated shadowed partitions result in a reduction in computations as compared to conventional fuzzy clustering. Unlike rough clustering, here the choice of threshold parameter is fully automated. The number of clusters is optimized in terms of various validity indices. It is observed that shadowed clustering can efficiently handle overlapping among clusters as well as model uncertainty in class boundaries. The algorithm is robust in the presence of outliers. A comparative study is made with related partitive approaches. Experimental results on synthetic as well as real data sets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.