Create adjacency matrix from nearest neighbour search. (convert adjacency list to adjacency matrix) - Matlab

Question

I have a matrix 2000x5, in the first column the point number, and in columns 2-5 the 4 neighbours (0s if there isnt a neighbour). Is there an efficient way to create an adjacency matrix out of this ?

1   129 0   65  0
2   130 0   66  85
3   131 169 67  0
4   132 170 68  87
5   133 0   69  81
6   134 0   70  82
7   135 173 71  83
8   136 174 72  84
9   137 161 73  0
10  138 162 74  93
11  139 163 75  0
12  140 164 76  95
13  141 165 77  89
14  142 166 78  90
15  143 167 79  91
16  144 168 80  92
17  145 0   81  65
18  146 0   82  66
....

I found the following thread, where it is explained for just one neighbour, but I am not sure how to use it for multiple neighbours. matlab adjacency list to adjacency matrix

I would very much appreciate any help.

Answer 1

A quick and simple technique:

adjMat = zeros(size(A,1));
for ind = 1:size(A,1)
    % Flag 1 on each row 'ind' at the indices mentioned in col 2-5
    adjMat(ind, nonzeros(A(ind,2:end))) = 1;
end

Since you have mentioned using the nearest neighbour search, it is likely that the adjacency list should be completely filled to result in a undirected graph, in the sense that if row 1 has 20 as a neighbour, row 20 very likely has 1 as a neighbour.

However technically speaking, this will produce an adjacency matrix exactly equivalent to the adjacency list, assuming nothing by itself.

Example:

For an adjacency list

A = [1 2 3; 2 0 1; 3 1 4; 4 5 3; 5 4 0]

A =

 1     2     3
 2     0     1
 3     1     4
 4     5     3
 5     4     0

The result is:

adjMat =

 0     1     1     0     0
 1     0     0     0     0
 1     0     0     1     0
 0     0     1     0     1
 0     0     0     1     0

---

P.S. To force undirected-ness, you can simply add another statement in the for loop body:

adjMat(nonzeros(A(ind,2:end)),ind) = 1;

This will ensure that the adjacency matrix will be symmetric, which is a characteristic of undirected graphs.