Computing approximate tree edit distance using relaxation labeling

Andrea Torsello, Edwin R. Hancock

Abstract: This paper presents a new method for computing the tree edit distance problem with uniform edit cost. We commence by showing that any tree obtained with a sequence of cut operations is a subtree of the transitive closure of the original tree, we show that the necessary condition for any subtree to be a solution can be reduced to a clique problem in a derived structure. Using this idea we transform the problem of computing tree edit distance into a series of maximum weight clique problems. We, then use relaxation labeling to find an approximation to the tree edit distance.