# Node Overlap Removal by Growing a Tree

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.02653 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.02653/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Aug 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Multi-point dimensionality reduction to improve projection layout reliability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06224/) (2021)
- [FORBID: Fast Overlap Removal By stochastic gradIent Descent for Graph Drawing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10334/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Node overlap removal is a necessary step in many scenarios including laying out a graph, or visualizing a tag cloud. Our contribution is a new overlap removal algorithm that iteratively builds a Minimum Spanning Tree on a Delaunay triangulation of the node centers and removes the node overlaps by "growing" the tree. The algorithm is simple to implement yet produces high quality layouts. According to our experiments it runs several times faster than the current state-of-the-art methods.