CNMBI: Determining the Number of Clusters Using Center Pairwise Matching and Boundary Filtering

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Zhang, Ruilin, Zheng, Haiyang, Wang, Hongpeng
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Zhang, Ruilin
Zheng, Haiyang
Wang, Hongpeng
author_facet Zhang, Ruilin
Zheng, Haiyang
Wang, Hongpeng
contents One of the main challenges in data mining is choosing the optimal number of clusters without prior information. Notably, existing methods are usually in the philosophy of cluster validation and hence have underlying assumptions on data distribution, which prevents their application to complex data such as large-scale images and high-dimensional data from the real world. In this regard, we propose an approach named CNMBI. Leveraging the distribution information inherent in the data space, we map the target task as a dynamic comparison process between cluster centers regarding positional behavior, without relying on the complete clustering results and designing the complex validity index as before. Bipartite graph theory is then employed to efficiently model this process. Additionally, we find that different samples have different confidence levels and thereby actively remove low-confidence ones, which is, for the first time to our knowledge, considered in cluster number determination. CNMBI is robust and allows for more flexibility in the dimension and shape of the target data (e.g., CIFAR-10 and STL-10). Extensive comparison studies with state-of-the-art competitors on various challenging datasets demonstrate the superiority of our method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_26744
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CNMBI: Determining the Number of Clusters Using Center Pairwise Matching and Boundary Filtering
Zhang, Ruilin
Zheng, Haiyang
Wang, Hongpeng
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
One of the main challenges in data mining is choosing the optimal number of clusters without prior information. Notably, existing methods are usually in the philosophy of cluster validation and hence have underlying assumptions on data distribution, which prevents their application to complex data such as large-scale images and high-dimensional data from the real world. In this regard, we propose an approach named CNMBI. Leveraging the distribution information inherent in the data space, we map the target task as a dynamic comparison process between cluster centers regarding positional behavior, without relying on the complete clustering results and designing the complex validity index as before. Bipartite graph theory is then employed to efficiently model this process. Additionally, we find that different samples have different confidence levels and thereby actively remove low-confidence ones, which is, for the first time to our knowledge, considered in cluster number determination. CNMBI is robust and allows for more flexibility in the dimension and shape of the target data (e.g., CIFAR-10 and STL-10). Extensive comparison studies with state-of-the-art competitors on various challenging datasets demonstrate the superiority of our method.
title CNMBI: Determining the Number of Clusters Using Center Pairwise Matching and Boundary Filtering
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26744