  Biclustering numerical data became a popular data-mining task in the
beginning of 2000's, especially for analysing gene expression data. A bicluster
reflects a strong association between a subset of objects and a subset of
attributes in a numerical object/attribute data-table. So called biclusters of
similar values can be thought as maximal sub-tables with close values. Only few
methods address a complete, correct and non redundant enumeration of such
patterns, which is a well-known intractable problem, while no formal framework
exists. In this paper, we introduce important links between biclustering and
formal concept analysis. More specifically, we originally show that Triadic
Concept Analysis (TCA), provides a nice mathematical framework for
biclustering. Interestingly, existing algorithms of TCA, that usually apply on
binary data, can be used (directly or with slight modifications) after a
preprocessing step for extracting maximal biclusters of similar values.
