Abstract:

While it is very reasonable to use a multigraph consisting of multiple edges between vertices to represent various relationships, the multigraph has not drawn much attention in research. To visualize such a multigraph, a clear layout representing a global structure is of great importance, and interactive visual analysis which allows the multiple edges to be adjusted in appropriate ways for detailed presentation is also essential. A novel interactive two-phase approach to visualizing and exploring multigraph is proposed. The approach consists of two phases: the first phase improves the previous popular works on force-directed methods to produce a brief drawing for the aggregation graph of the input multigraph, while the second phase proposes two interactive strategies, the magnifier model and the thematic-oriented subgraph model. The former highlights the internal details of an aggregation edge which is selected interactively by user, and draws the details in a magnifying view by cubic Bezier curves; the latter highlights only the thematic subgraph consisting of the selected multiple edges that the user concerns. The efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated with a real-world multigraph dataset and how it is used effectively is discussed for various potential applications.