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Clic: Highlighting Clique Motifs in Biofabric Visualizations

Authors Sara Di Bartolomeo , Fabrizio Montecchiani , Andrea Tomassoni

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Document Identifiers

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Mathematics of computing → Combinatorial algorithms
Keywords
  • Biofabric
  • Clique Visualization
  • Clustered Graphs
  • Integer Linear Programming
  • Motif Simplification

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Abstract

Dense graphs are hard to read because many edges compete for the same visual space. BioFabric reduces this problem by drawing nodes as horizontal lines and edges as vertical segments, removing edge crossings by design. However, its readability still depends strongly on the ordering of nodes and edges. In this paper, we focus on clique motifs in BioFabric. Since every pair of nodes in a clique is connected, drawing all clique edges can add visual clutter without adding much information once the clique is known. A compact square or rectangular mark can instead indicate the clique as a dense region of the network. This only works, however, when the layout places the clique nodes and edges close enough to form a contiguous region. We model this as an optimization problem and introduce an integer linear programming formulation that computes node orderings designed to make clique motifs compact. We provide a quantitative evaluation to show the scalability and results obtained with the method. Our approach extends recent work on BioFabric layout optimization from staircase motifs to clique motifs, with particular attention to overlapping cliques, where several compact regions compete for the same rows.

Cite As Get BibTex

Sara Di Bartolomeo, Fabrizio Montecchiani, and Andrea Tomassoni. Clic: Highlighting Clique Motifs in Biofabric Visualizations. In 34th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 396, pp. 19:1-19:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.GD.2026.19

Author Details

Sara Di Bartolomeo
  • TU Wien, Austria
Fabrizio Montecchiani
  • University of Perugia, Italy
Andrea Tomassoni
  • University of Perugia, Italy

Funding

The work of Sara Di Bartolomeo was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/ESP513] "Simultaneous Multiprojection Graph Visualization".

Supplementary Materials

References

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