Geometry-Based Edge Clustering for Graph Visualization

• Published in: IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics Vol. 14; no. 6; pp. 1277 - 1284
• Main Authors: Cui, Weiwei, Zhou, Hong, Qu, Huamin, Wong, Pak Chung, Li, Xiaoming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.11.2008; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Automatic control; Automatic generation control; Bundles; Cities and towns; Color; Data visualization; Displays; edge clustering; Finite element method; Graph visualization; Graphs; Index Terms— Mathematical models; mesh; Mesh generation; Opacity; Road transportation; Switches; Telecommunication traffic; Traffic control; visual clutter; Visualization
• ISSN: 1077-2626; 1941-0506
• DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2008.135

Graphs have been widely used to model relationships among data. For large graphs, excessive edge crossings make the display visually cluttered and thus difficult to explore. In this paper, we propose a novel geometry-based edge-clustering framework that can group edges into bundles to reduce the overall edge crossings. Our method uses a control mesh to guide the edge-clustering process; edge bundles can be formed by forcing all edges to pass through some control points on the mesh. The control mesh can be generated at different levels of detail either manually or automatically based on underlying graph patterns. Users can further interact with the edge-clustering results through several advanced visualization techniques such as color and opacity enhancement. Compared with other edge-clustering methods, our approach is intuitive, flexible, and efficient. The experiments on some large graphs demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.