Bridging the Gap between Graph Edit Distance and Kernel Machines

This book focuses on graph kernel functions that are highly tolerant towards structural errors. The basic idea is to incorporate concepts from graph edit distance into kernel functions, thus combining the flexibility of edit distance-based graph matching with the power of kernel machines for pattern recognition. The authors introduce a collection of novel graph kernels related to edit distance, including diffusion kernels, convolution kernels, and random walk kernels. From an experimental evaluation of a semi-artificial line drawing data set and four real-world data sets consisting of pictures, microscopic images, fingerprints, and molecules, the authors demonstrate that some of the kernel functions in conjunction with support vector machines significantly outperform traditional edit distance-based nearest-neighbor classifiers, both in terms of classification accuracy and running time.