Graph Classification with 2D Convolutional Neural Networks

Graph learning is currently dominated by graph kernels, which, while powerful, suffer some significant limitations. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) offer a very appealing alternative, but processing graphs with CNNs is not trivial. To address this challenge, many sophisticated extensions of CNNs have recently been introduced. In this paper, we reverse the problem: rather than proposing yet another graph CNN model, we introduce a novel way to represent graphs as multi-channel image-like structures that allows them to be handled by vanilla 2D CNNs. Experiments reveal that our method is more accurate than state-of-the-art graph kernels and graph CNNs on 4 out of 6 real-world datasets (with and without continuous node attributes), and close elsewhere. Our approach is also preferable to graph kernels in terms of time complexity. Code and data are publicly available.

PDF Abstract ICLR 2018 PDF ICLR 2018 Abstract

Results from the Paper


Task Dataset Model Metric Name Metric Value Global Rank Result Benchmark
Graph Classification COLLAB 2D CNN Accuracy 71.76% # 27
Graph Classification IMDb-B 2D CNN Accuracy 70.40% # 35
Graph Classification RE-M12K 2D CNN Accuracy 48.13% # 3
Graph Classification RE-M5K 2D CNN Accuracy 52.11% # 5

Methods


No methods listed for this paper. Add relevant methods here