A technique for the concept-based detection of functional modules in an interaction network

•The proposed system can detect functional modules conceptually the same as well as structurally similar to users' intent.•We provided a formal specification of our technique to detect functional modules based on concept.•Concept modules are evaluated as queries in the PPI network of BioGRID and obtained meaningful results.

In this paper, we propose a concept-based detection of functional modules in an interaction network. This method makes it possible to detect functional modules that are conceptually identical to users' needs.