Using k-medoids for distributed approximate similarity search with arbitrary distances

This paper presents GMASK, a general algorithm for distributed approximate similarity search that accepts any arbitrary distance function. GMASK requires a clustering algorithm that induces Voronoi regions in a dataset and returns a representative element for each region. Then, it creates a multilevel indexing structure suitable for large datasets with high dimensionality and sparsity, usually stored in distributed systems. Many similarity search algorithms rely on $k$-means, typically associated with the Euclidean distance, which is inappropriate for specific problems. Instead, in this work we implement GMASK using $k$-medoids to make it compatible with any distance and a wider range of problems. Experimental results verify the applicability of this method with real datasets, improving the performance of alternative algorithms for approximate similarity search. In addition, results confirm existing intuitions regarding the advantages of using certain instances of the Minkowski distance in high-dimensional datasets.