Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (or DBSCAN) is an algorithm used in cluster analysis which is described in this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBSCAN).



The basic idea of cluster analysis is to partition a set of points into clusters which have some relationship to each other. In the case of DBSCAN the user chooses the minimum number of points required to form a cluster and the maximum distance between points in each cluster. Each point is then considered in turn, along with its neighbours, and allocated to a cluster.