Using dual-network-analyser for communities detecting in dual networks

BACKGROUND: Representations of the relationships among data using networks are widely used in several research fields such as computational biology, medical informatics and social network mining. Recently, complex networks have been introduced to better capture the insights of the modelled scenarios. Among others, dual networks (DNs) consist of mapping information as pairs of networks containing the same set of nodes but with different edges: one, called physical network, has unweighted edges, while the other, called conceptual network, has weighted edges. RESULTS: We focus on DNs and we propose a tool to find common subgraphs (aka communities) in DNs with particular properties. The tool, called Dual-Network-Analyser, is based on the identification of communities that induce optimal modular subgraphs in the conceptual network and connected subgraphs in the physical one. It includes the Louvain algorithm applied to the considered case. The Dual-Network-Analyser can be used to study DNs, to find common modular communities. We report results on using the tool to identify communities on synthetic DNs as well as real cases in social networks and biological data. CONCLUSION: The proposed method has been tested by using synthetic and biological networks. Results demonstrate that it is well able to detect meaningful information from DNs.