Augmentation of a nearest neighbour clustering algorithm with a partial supervision strategy for biomedical data classification

Abstract: In this paper, a partial supervision strategy for a recently developed clustering algorithm, the nearest neighbour clustering algorithm (NNCA), is proposed. The proposed method (NNCA-PS) offers classification capability with a smaller amount of a priori knowledge, where a small number of data objects from the entire data set are used as labelled objects to guide the clustering process towards a better search space. Experimental results show that NNCA-PS gives promising results of 89% sensitivity at 95% specificity when used to segment retinal blood vessels, and a maximum classification accuracy of 99.5% with 97.2% average accuracy when applied to a breast cancer data set. Comparisons with other methods indicate the robustness of the proposed method in classification. Additionally, experiments on parallel environments indicate the suitability and scalability of NNCA-PS in handling larger data sets.