Correlation clustering also relates to a different task, where correlations among attributes of feature vectors in a high-dimensional space are assumed to exist guiding the clustering process. These correlations may be different in different clusters, thus a global decorrelation cannot reduce this to traditional (uncorrelated) clustering.
Correlations among subsets of attributes result in different spatial shapes of clusters. Hence, the similarity between cluster objects is defined by taking into account the local correlation patterns. With this notion, the term has been introduced in simultaneously with the notion discussed above. Different methods for correlation clustering of this type are discussed in, the relationship to different types of clustering is discussed in, see also Clustering high-dimensional data.
Correlation clustering (according to this definition) can be shown to be closely related to biclustering. As in biclustering, the goal is to identify groups of objects that share a correlation in some of their attributes; where the correlation is usually typical for the individual clusters.