Image clustering

Clustering algorithms – a field of data mining – aims at finding a grouping structure in the input data without any a-priori information. The master thesis is dedicated for image processing and clustering algorithms. There are point-feature detection, description and comparison methods analyzed in this paper. The SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) by D. Lowe has been shown to behave better than the other ones; hence it has been used for image to image distance calculation and undirectly in clustering phase. Finding distances between images is not a trivial task and it also has been analysed in this thesis. Several methods have been compared using ROC (Receiver Operating Curve) and EER measurements. Image clustering process is described as: (1) training of ESOM (Emergent Self-Organizing Map), (2) its visualization in U-Matrix, (3) neuron clustering using waterflood algorithm, and (4) image grouping according to their best-matching unit neurons. The paper demonstrates the image clustering algorithm on public object image databases and real life images from the Internet as well