A Layout-Based Classification Method for Visualizing Time-Varying Graphs

Abstract

Connectivity analysis between the components of large evolving systems can reveal significant patterns of interaction. The systems can be simulated by topological graph structures. However, such analysis becomes challenging on large and complex graphs. Tasks such as comparing, searching, and summarizing structures, are difficult due to the enormous number of calculations required. For time-varying graphs, the temporal dimension even intensifies the difficulty. In this article, we propose to reduce the complexity of analysis by focusing on subgraphs that are induced by closely related entities. To summarize the diverse structures of subgraphs, we build a supervised layout-based classification model. The main premise is that the graph structures can induce a unique appearance of the layout. In contrast to traditional graph theory-based and contemporary neural network-based methods of graph classification, our approach generates low costs and there is no need to learn informative graph representations. Combined with temporally stable visualizations, we can also facilitate the understanding of sub-structures and the tracking of graph evolution. The method is evaluated on two real-world datasets. The results show that our system is highly effective in carrying out visual-based analytics of large graphs.