Multiple kernel clustering based on centered kernel alignment

Multiple kernel clustering (MKC), which performs kernel-based data fusion for data clustering, is an emerging topic. It aims at solving clustering problems with multiple cues. Most MKC methods usually extend existing clustering methods with a multiple kernel learning (MKL) setting. In this paper, we propose a novel MKC method that is different from those popular approaches. Centered kernel alignment—an effective kernel evaluation measure—is employed in order to unify the two tasks of clustering and MKL into a single optimization framework. To solve the formulated optimization problem, an efficient two-step iterative algorithm is developed. Experiments on several UCI datasets and face image datasets validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our MKC algorithm.