Exploiting the Analogy between the Immune System and Sparse Distributed Memories

The relationship between immunological memory and a class of associative memories known as sparse distributed memories (SDM) is well known. This paper proposes a new model for clustering non-stationary data based on a combination of salient features from the two metaphors. The resulting system embodies the important principles of both types of memory; it is self-organising, robust, scalable, dynamic and can perform anomaly detection, and is shown to be a more faithful model of the biological system than a standard SDM. The model is first applied to clustering static benchmark data-sets, and is shown to outperform another system based on immunological principles. It is then applied to clustering non-stationary data-sets with promising results. The system is also shown to be scalable therefore is of potential for clustering real-world data-sets.