Graph-Based Semi-Supervised Learning: A Comprehensive Review

Semi-supervised learning (SSL) has tremendous value in practice due to the utilization of both labeled and unlabelled data. An essential class of SSL methods, referred to as graph-based semi-supervised learning (GSSL) methods in the literature, is to first represent each sample as a node in an affinity graph, and then, the label information of unlabeled samples can be inferred based on the structure of the constructed graph. GSSL methods have demonstrated their advantages in various domains due to their uniqueness of structure, the universality of applications, and their scalability to large-scale data. Focusing on GSSL methods only, this work aims to provide both researchers and practitioners with a solid and systematic understanding of relevant advances as well as the underlying connections among them. The concentration on one class of SSL makes this article distinct from recent surveys that cover a more general and broader picture of SSL methods yet often neglect the fundamental understanding of GSSL methods. In particular, a significant contribution of this article lies in a newly generalized taxonomy for GSSL under the unified framework, with the most up-to-date references and valuable resources such as codes, datasets, and applications. Furthermore, we present several potential research directions as future work with our insights into this rapidly growing field.