Selecting variables for k-means cluster analysis by using a genetic algorithm that optimises the silhouettes

The goal of present work is to analyse the effect of having non-informative variables (NIV) in a data set when applying cluster analysis and to propose a method computationally capable of detecting and removing these variables. The method proposed is based on the use of a genetic algorithm to select those variables important to make the presence of groups in data clear. The procedure has been implemented to be used with k-means and using the cluster silhouettes as fitness function for the genetic algorithm.The main problem that can appear when applying the method to real data is the fact that, in general, we do not know a priori what the real cluster structure is (number and composition of the groups).The work explores the evolution of the silhouette values computed from the clusters built by using k-means when non-informative variables are added to the original data set in both a literature data set as well as some simulated data in higher dimension. The procedure has also been applied to real data sets.     

Adaptive contour-based statistical background subtraction method for moving target detection in infrared video sequences

A robust contour-based statistical background subtraction method for detection of non-uniform thermal targets in infrared imagery is presented. The foremost step of the method comprises of generation of background frame using statistical information of an initial set of frames not containing any targets. The generated background frame is made adaptive by continuously updating the background using the motion information of the scene. The background subtraction method followed by a clutter rejection stage ensure the detection of foreground objects. The next step comprises of detection of contours and distinguishing the target boundaries from the noisy background. This is achieved by using the Canny edge detector that extracts the contours followed by a k-means clustering approach to differentiate the object contour from the background contours. The post processing step comprises of morphological edge linking approach to close any broken contours and finally flood fill is performed to generate the silhouettes of moving targets. This method is validated on infrared video data consisting of a variety of moving targets. Experimental results demonstrate a high detection rate with minimal false alarms establishing the robustness of the proposed method.