Deep Clustering with Self-supervision using Pairwise Data Similarities

Deep clustering incorporates embedding into clustering to find a lower-dimensional space appropriate for clustering. In this paper we propose a novel deep clustering framework with self-supervision using pairwise data similarities (DCSS). The proposed method consists of two successive phases. In the first phase we propose to form hypersphere-like groups of similar data points, i.e. one hypersphere per cluster, employing an autoencoder which is trained using cluster-specific losses. The hyper-spheres are formed in the autoencoder’s latent space. In the second phase, we propose to employ pairwise data similarities to create a K-dimensional space that is capable of accommodating more complex cluster distributions; hence, providing more accurate clustering performance. K is the number of clusters. The autoencoder’s latent space obtained in the first phase is used as the input of the second phase. Effectiveness of both phases are demonstrated on seven benchmark datasets through conducting a rigorous set of experiments.