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Time series clustering is the process of grouping time series with respect to their similarity or characteristics. Previous approaches usually combine a specific distance measure for time series and a standard clustering method. However, these approaches do not take the similarity of the different subsequences of each time series into account, which can be used to better compare the time series objects of the dataset. In this paper, we propose a novel technique of time series clustering based on two clustering stages. In a first step, a least squares polynomial segmentation procedure is applied to each time series, which is based on a growing window technique that returns different-length segments. Then, all the segments are projected into same dimensional space, based on the coefficients of the model that approximates the segment and a set of statistical features. After mapping, a first hierarchical clustering phase is applied to all mapped segments, returning groups of segments for each time series. These clusters are used to represent all time series in the same dimensional space, after defining another specific mapping process. In a second and final clustering stage, all the time series objects are grouped. We consider internal clustering quality to automatically adjust the main parameter of the algorithm, which is an error threshold for the segmentation. The results obtained on 84 datasets from the UCR Time Series Classification Archive have been compared against two state-of-the-art methods, showing that the performance of this methodology is very promising.

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Donor-Recipient (D-R) matching is one of the main challenges to be fulfilled nowadays. Due to the increasing number of recipients and the small amount of donors in liver transplantation, the allocation method is crucial. In this paper, to establish a fair comparison, the United Network for Organ Sharing database was used with 4 different end-points (3 months, and 1, 2 and 5 years), with a total of 39, 189 D-R pairs and 28 donor and recipient variables. Modelling techniques were divided into two groups: 1) classical statistical methods, including Logistic Regression (LR) and Naïve Bayes (NB), and 2) standard machine learning techniques, including Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting (GB) or Support Vector Machines (SVM), among others. The methods were compared with standard scores, MELD, SOFT and BAR. For the 5-years end-point, LR (AUC = 0.654) outperformed several machine learning techniques, such as MLP (AUC = 0.599), GB (AUC = 0.600), SVM (AUC = 0.624) or RF (AUC = 0.644), among others. Moreover, LR also outperformed standard scores. The same pattern was reproduced for the others 3 end-points. Complex machine learning methods were not able to improve the performance of liver allocation, probably due to the implicit limitations associated to the collection process of the database.