PixelMaps: a new visual data mining approach for analyzing large spatial data sets

Abstract

PixelMaps are a new pixel-oriented visual data mining technique for large spatial datasets. They combine kernel-density-based clustering with pixel-oriented displays to emphasize clusters while avoiding overlap in locally dense point sets on maps. Because a full evaluation of density functions is prohibitively expensive, we also propose an efficient approximation, Fast-PixelMap, based on a synthesis of the quadtree and gridfile data structures.