Mental map preserving graph drawing using simulated annealing

摘要

Information visualization has attracted much attention in recent years in many fields of science and engineering. In many applications, graphs are 'dynamic' in the sense that changes are constantly applied to a graph to reflect the evolution of the system behaviour represented by the graph. In the past, the concept of the so-called 'mental map' has largely been ignored. Users often have to spend a lot of time relearning the redrawn graphs. This paper proposes an effective way to release the user from such kind of a distasteful job by maintaining a high degree of the 'mental map' for general graphs when graphs are redrawn. Our experimental results suggest this new approach to be promising.