Bayesian interpretation to generalize adaptive mean shift algorithm

Abstract

The Adaptive Mean Shift (AMS) algorithm is a popular and simple non-parametric clustering approach based on Kernel Density Estimation. In this paper the AMS is reformulated in a Bayesian framework, which permits a natural generalization in several directions and is shown to improve performance. The Bayesian framework considers the AMS to be a method of obtaining a posterior mode. This allows the algorithm to be generalized with three components which are not considered in the conventional approach: node weights, a prior for a particular location, and a posterior distribution for the bandwidth. Practical methods of building the three different components are considered.