Graphs are commonly used to encode structural information in many fields.
Graph matching is the problem of finding a similiairy between garphs.
The case of exact graph matching is known as the graph isomorphism problem. The problem of exact matching of a graph to a part of another graph is called subgraph isomorphism problem.
The inexact graph matching refers to matching problems when exact matching is impoosible, e.g, when the number of vertices in the two graphs are different. In this case it is requreid to find the best poosible match.
For example, in image recognition applications, the results of image segmentation typically preduces data graphs with the numbers of vertices much larger than the model graphs data expected to match against.