Deep Clustering for Improved Inter-Cluster Separability and Intra-Cluster Homogeneity with Cohesive Loss

Abstract

To date, many studies have employed clustering for the classification of unlabeled data. Deep separate clustering applies several deep learning models to conventional clustering algorithms to more clearly separate the distribution of the clusters. In this paper, we employ a convolutional autoencoder to learn the features of input images. Following this, k-means clustering is conducted using the encoded layer features learned by the convolutional autoencoder. A center loss function is then added to aggregate the data points into clusters to increase the intra-cluster homogeneity. Finally, we calculate and increase the inter-cluster separability. We combine all loss functions into a single global objective function. Our new deep clustering method surpasses the performance of existing clustering approaches when compared in experiments under the same conditions.