Visualizing edge-edge relations in graphs

Abstract

Graphs are used to model relations between sets of objects. Objects are represented by vertices and relations by edges of the graph. Besides vertex-vertex relations, in some application domains also relations between edges exist. Our new visualization approach supports the investigation of both relation types in one diagram. Edge-edge relations are visualized as curves that are directly integrated into the node-link diagram that represents the object-relation structure. In contrast, vertex-vertex relations are illustrated distinguishably from edge-edge relations using straight links as representations. While the shape of links is used to differentiate between the relation types, the weights of the edge-edge relations are mapped to the width and color of the curves. To facilitate an extensive analysis of interrelations, our approach incorporates several interaction techniques that can be used for filtering and highlighting. The usability of our visualization is demonstrated with two case studies in the application domains of bioinformatics and financial services.