VCD: A network visualization tool based on community detection

In a complex network, communities are groups of nodes that are densely connected inside while sparsely connected to the outside. The study of such communities is crucial in exploring the structure of a network, especially when small communities form larger ones that in turn group together to build even larger ones, resulting in a hierarchy. Besides, fence-sitting nodes, nodes shared among different communities, are common in real networks. Although a large amount of network visualization tools are available, few could visualize the hierarchical community structure and fence-sitting nodes. Thus, we proposed visualization methods and accordingly developed a network visualization tool to dynamically uncover the hierarchical community structure and reveal fence-sitting nodes. Tests on a yeast network yielded satisfying results.