Fuzzy c-means (FCM) and possibilistic c-means (PCM) are the two most well-known clustering algorithms in fuzzy clustering area, and have been applied in many areas with their original or modified forms. However, FCM's noise sensitivity problem and PCM's overlapping cluster problem are also well known. Recently there have been several attempts to combine both of them to mitigate these problems and possibilistic fuzzy c-means (PFCM) showed promising results. In this paper, we propose a modified PFCM using regularization to reduce noise sensitivity in PFCM further. Regularization is a well-known technique to make a solution space smooth and an algorithm noise insensitive. The proposed algorithm, PFCM with regularization (PFCM-R), takes advantage of regularization and further reduce the effect of noise. Experimental results are given and show that PFCM-R is better than existing methods in noisy conditions.

MOTIVATION: The program MBBC 2.0 clusters time-course microarray data using a Bayesian product partition model. RESULTS: The Bayesian product partition model in Booth et al. (2007) simultaneously searches for the optimal number of clusters, and assigns cluster memberships based on temporal changes of gene expressions. MBBC 2.0 to makes this method easily available for statisticians and scientists, and is built with three free computer language software packages: Ox, R and C++, taking advantage of the strengths of each language. Within MBBC, the search algorithm is implemented with Ox and resulting graphs are drawn with R. A user-friendly graphical interface is built with C++ to run the Ox and R programs internally. Thus, MBBC users are not required to know how to use Ox, R or C++, but they must be pre-installed. AVAILABILITY: A self-extractable zip file, MBBC20zip.exe, is available at the MBBC webpage www.stat.ufl.edu/~casella/mbbc/, which contains MBBC.exe, source files, and all other related files. The current version works only in the Windows operating system. A free installation program and overview for Ox is available at www.doornik.com. A detailed installation guide for Ox is provided by MBBC, and is accessible without installing Ox. R is available at www.r-project.org/.