TDEC: Deep Embedded Image Clustering with Transformer and Distribution Information

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhang, Ruilin, Zheng, Haiyang, Wang, Hongpeng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918413484425216
author Zhang, Ruilin
Zheng, Haiyang
Wang, Hongpeng
author_facet Zhang, Ruilin
Zheng, Haiyang
Wang, Hongpeng
contents Image clustering is a crucial but challenging task in multimedia machine learning. Recently the combination of clustering with deep learning has achieved promising performance against conventional methods on high-dimensional image data. Unfortunately, existing deep clustering methods (DC) often ignore the importance of information fusion with a global perception field among different image regions on clustering images, especially complex ones. Additionally, the learned features are usually clustering-unfriendly in terms of dimensionality and are based only on simple distance information for the clustering. In this regard, we propose a deep embedded image clustering TDEC, which for the first time to our knowledge, jointly considers feature representation, dimensional preference, and robust assignment for image clustering. Specifically, we introduce the Transformer to form a novel module T-Encoder to learn discriminative features with global dependency while using the Dim-Reduction block to build a friendly low-dimensional space favoring clustering. Moreover, the distribution information of embedded features is considered in the clustering process to provide reliable supervised signals for joint training. Our method is robust and allows for more flexibility in data size, the number of clusters, and the context complexity. More importantly, the clustering performance of TDEC is much higher than recent competitors. Extensive experiments with state-of-the-art approaches on complex datasets show the superiority of TDEC.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_26746
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TDEC: Deep Embedded Image Clustering with Transformer and Distribution Information
Zhang, Ruilin
Zheng, Haiyang
Wang, Hongpeng
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Image clustering is a crucial but challenging task in multimedia machine learning. Recently the combination of clustering with deep learning has achieved promising performance against conventional methods on high-dimensional image data. Unfortunately, existing deep clustering methods (DC) often ignore the importance of information fusion with a global perception field among different image regions on clustering images, especially complex ones. Additionally, the learned features are usually clustering-unfriendly in terms of dimensionality and are based only on simple distance information for the clustering. In this regard, we propose a deep embedded image clustering TDEC, which for the first time to our knowledge, jointly considers feature representation, dimensional preference, and robust assignment for image clustering. Specifically, we introduce the Transformer to form a novel module T-Encoder to learn discriminative features with global dependency while using the Dim-Reduction block to build a friendly low-dimensional space favoring clustering. Moreover, the distribution information of embedded features is considered in the clustering process to provide reliable supervised signals for joint training. Our method is robust and allows for more flexibility in data size, the number of clusters, and the context complexity. More importantly, the clustering performance of TDEC is much higher than recent competitors. Extensive experiments with state-of-the-art approaches on complex datasets show the superiority of TDEC.
title TDEC: Deep Embedded Image Clustering with Transformer and Distribution Information
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.26746