NNP-NET: Accelerating t-SNE Graph Drawing for Large Static and Dynamic Graphs by Neural Networks

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Authors: Ilan Hartskeerl, Tamara Mchedlidze, Simon van Wageningen, Peter Vangorp, Alexandru Telea
Cited by: 1
References: 43

Abstract

Among recent graph drawing (GD) methods, tsNET creates high quality layouts but suffers from a very high runtime due to its underlying reliance on the t-SNE projection technique. We address this problem by presenting NNP-NET, a method that adapts NNP, a projection technique that can project high-dimensional datasets linearly in the data size, to handle both unweighted and weighted graphs, with layout quality being very close to the ground-truth tsNET. We also exploit NNP's built-in out-of-sample ability to enable NNP-NET to project time-dependent (dynamic) graphs while striking a good balance between layout stability and good layout quality. We show experiments that outline how NNP-NET can handle very large graphs - up to 50 million nodes and 108 million edges faster than all other comparable methods we are aware of while also yielding good quality metric values.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Graph Theory and Algorithms Data Visualization and Analytics 3D Shape Modeling and Analysis

Publication details

Journal / source
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Volume
32
Issue
7
Pages
5401–5414
Publication date
27 February 2026
Language
EN