Generalized Boundary Detection Using Compression-based Analytics

We present a new method for boundary detection within sequential data using compression-based analytics. Our approach is to approximate the information distance between two adjacent sliding windows within the sequence. Large values in the distance metric are indicative of boundary locations. A new algorithm is developed, referred to as sliding information distance (SLID), that provides a fast, accurate, and robust approximation to the normalized information distance. A modified smoothed z-score algorithm is used to locate peaks in the distance metric, indicating boundary locations. A variety of data sources are considered, including text and audio, to demonstrate the efficacy of our approach.