LCM from FCA Point of View: A CbO-style Algorithm with Speed-up Features

LCM is an algorithm for enumeration of frequent closed itemsets in transaction databases. It is well known that when we ignore the required frequency, the closed itemsets are exactly intents of formal concepts in Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). We describe LCM in terms of FCA and show that LCM is basically the Close-by-One algorithm with multiple speed-up features for processing sparse data. We analyze the speed-up features and compare them with those of similar FCA algorithms, like FCbO and algorithms from the In-Close family.