The subgraph isomorphism problem asks, for two finite graphs
and
,
whether
contains a subgraph isomorphic
to
.
The problem is NP-complete; the clique decision problem is obtained by taking
to be a complete graph.
Unlike graph isomorphism, the subgraph problem allows graph vertices and graph
edges of to be discarded. The induced subgraph isomorphism problem
additionally requires the copy of
to be a vertex-induced
subgraph.