Enhanced Denesity Peak Clustering for High-Dimensional Data

Abstract

As a foundational clustering paradigm, Density Peak Clustering (DPC) partitions samples into clusters based on their density peaks, garnering widespread attention. However, traditional DPC methods usually focus on high-density regions, neglecting representative peaks in relatively low-density areas, particularly in datasets with varying densities and multiple peaks. Moreover, existing DPC variants struggle to identify clusters correctly in high-dimensional spaces due to the indistinct distance differences among samples and sparse data distributions. Additionally, existing methods typically adopt a one-step label assignment strategy, making them prone to cascading errors when initial misassignments occur. To address these challenges, we propose an Enhanced Density Peak Clustering (EDPC) method, which creatively incorporates multilayer perceptron (MLP)-based dimensionality reduction and a hierarchical label assignment strategy to significantly improve clustering performance in high-dimensional scenarios. Specifically, we introduce an effective selection condition that combines average densities and density-related distances to generate potential cluster centers, ensuring that peaks across different density regions are considered simultaneously. Furthermore, an MLP, guided by pseudo-labels from sub-clusters, is designed to learn low-dimensional embeddings for high-dimensional data, preserving data locality while enhancing clusterability. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of EDPC against state-of-the-art DPC methods.