Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (
DBSCAN) is a
data clustering algorithm proposed by Martin Ester,
Hans-Peter Kriegel, Jörg Sander and Xiaowei Xu in 1996. It is a density-based clustering algorithm: given a set of points in some space, it groups together points that are closely packed together (points with many
nearby neighbors), marking as outliers points that lie alone in low-density regions (whose nearest neighbors are too far away). DBSCAN is one of the most common clustering algorithms and also most cited in scientific literature.