Redefining the Graph Edit Distance

Graph edit distance has been used since 1983 to compare objects in machine learning when these objects are represented by attributed graphs instead of vectors. In these cases, the graph edit distance is usually applied to deduce a distance between attributed graphs. This distance is defined as the minimum amount of edit operations (deletion, insertion and substitution of nodes and edges) needed to transform a graph into another. Since now, it has been stated that the distance properties have to be applied [(1) non-negativity (2) symmetry (3) identity and (4) triangle inequality] to the involved edit operations in the process of computing the graph edit distance to make the graph edit distance a metric. In this paper, we show that there is no need to impose the triangle inequality in each edit operation. This is an important finding since in pattern recognition applications, the classification ratio usually maximizes in the edit operation combinations (deletion, insertion and substitution of nodes and edges) that the triangle inequality is not fulfilled.

Dynamic and Internal Longest Common Substring

Given two strings S and T, each of length at most n, the longest common substring (LCS) problem is to find a longest substring common to S and T. This is a classical problem in computer science with an $$\mathcal {O}(n)$$ O ( n ) -time solution. In the fully dynamic setting, edit operations are allowed in either of the two strings, and the problem is to find an LCS after each edit. We present the first solution to the fully dynamic LCS problem requiring sublinear time in n per edit operation. In particular, we show how to find an LCS after each edit operation in $$\tilde{\mathcal {O}}(n^{2/3})$$ O ~ ( n 2 / 3 ) time, after $$\tilde{\mathcal {O}}(n)$$ O ~ ( n ) -time and space preprocessing. This line of research has been recently initiated in a somewhat restricted dynamic variant by Amir et al. [SPIRE 2017]. More specifically, the authors presented an $$\tilde{\mathcal {O}}(n)$$ O ~ ( n ) -sized data structure that returns an LCS of the two strings after a single edit operation (that is reverted afterwards) in $$\tilde{\mathcal {O}}(1)$$ O ~ ( 1 ) time. At CPM 2018, three papers (Abedin et al., Funakoshi et al., and Urabe et al.) studied analogously restricted dynamic variants of problems on strings; specifically, computing the longest palindrome and the Lyndon factorization of a string after a single edit operation. We develop dynamic sublinear-time algorithms for both of these problems as well. We also consider internal LCS queries, that is, queries in which we are to return an LCS of a pair of substrings of S and T. We show that answering such queries is hard in general and propose efficient data structures for several restricted cases.

MODEL-GUIDED ATTRIBUTED STRING MATCHING BY SPLIT-AND-MERGE FOR SHAPE RECOGNITION

Due to noise and distortion, segmentation uncertainty is a key problem in structural pattern analysis. In this paper we propose the use of the split operation for shape recognition by attributed string matching. After illustrating the disadvantage of attributed string matching using the merge operation, the split operation is proposed. Under the guidance of the model shape, an input shape can be reapproximated, using the split operation, into a new attributed string representation. By combining the split and the merge operations for shape matching it is unnecessary to apply any type of edit operation to a model shape. This makes the distance between the input shape and the model shape more meaningful and stable, and improves recognition results. An algorithm for attributed string matching by split-and-merge is proposed. To eliminate the effect of the numbers of primitives in the model shape on the shape distance, shape recognition based on a similarity measure is also proposed. Good experimental results prove the feasibility of the proposed approach for general shape recognition.