  Separating active regions that are quiet from potentially eruptive ones is a
key issue in Space Weather applications. Traditional classification schemes
such as Mount Wilson and McIntosh have been effective in relating an active
region large scale magnetic configuration to its ability to produce eruptive
events. However, their qualitative nature prevents systematic studies of an
active region's evolution for example. We introduce a new clustering of active
regions that is based on the local geometry observed in Line of Sight
magnetogram and continuum images. We use a reduced-dimension representation of
an active region that is obtained by factoring the corresponding data matrix
comprised of local image patches. Two factorizations can be compared via the
definition of appropriate metrics on the resulting factors. The distances
obtained from these metrics are then used to cluster the active regions. We
find that these metrics result in natural clusterings of active regions. The
clusterings are related to large scale descriptors of an active region such as
its size, its local magnetic field distribution, and its complexity as measured
by the Mount Wilson classification scheme. We also find that including data
focused on the neutral line of an active region can result in an increased
correspondence between our clustering results and other active region
descriptors such as the Mount Wilson classifications and the $R$ value. We
provide some recommendations for which metrics, matrix factorization
techniques, and regions of interest to use to study active regions.
