In an era of big data, face images captured in social media and forensic investigations, etc., generally lack labels, while the number of identities (clusters) may range from a few dozen to thousands. Therefore, it is of practical importance to cluster a large number of unlabeled face images into an efficient range of identities or even the exact identities, which can avoid image labeling by hand. Here, we propose adaptive facial imagery clustering that involves face representations, spectral clustering, and reinforcement learning (Q-learning). First, we use a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) to generate face representations, and we adopt a spectral clustering model to construct a similarity matrix and achieve clustering partition. Then, we use an internal evaluation measure (the Davies–Bouldin index) to evaluate the clustering quality. Finally, we adopt Q-learning as the feedback module to build a dynamic multiparameter debugging process. The experimental results on the ORL Face Database show the effectiveness of our method in terms of an optimal number of clusters of 39, which is almost the actual number of 40 clusters; our method can achieve 99.2% clustering accuracy. Subsequent studies should focus on reducing the computational complexity of dealing with more face images.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.