Robust inference for parsimonious model-based clustering

We introduce a robust clustering procedure for parsimonious model-based clustering. The classical mclust framework is robustified through impartial trimming and eigenvalue-ratio constraints (the tclust framework, which is robust but not affine invariant). An advantage of our resulting mtclust approach is that eigenvalue-ratio constraints are not needed for certain model formulations, leading to affine invariant robust parsimonious clustering. We illustrate the approach via simulations and a benchmark real data example. R code for the proposed method is available at https://github.com/afarcome/mtclust.