  Merge trees, contour trees, and Reeb graphs are graph-based topological
descriptors that capture topological changes of (sub)level sets of scalar
fields. Comparing scalar fields using their topological descriptors has many
applications in topological data analysis and visualization of scientific data.
Recently, Munch and Stefanou introduced a labeled interleaving distance for
comparing two labeled merge trees, which enjoys a number of theoretical and
algorithmic properties. In particular, the labeled interleaving distance
between merge trees can be computed in polynomial time. In this work, we define
the labeled interleaving distance for labeled Reeb graphs. We then prove that
the (ordinary) interleaving distance between Reeb graphs equals the minimum of
the labeled interleaving distance over all labelings. We also provide an
efficient algorithm for computing the labeled interleaving distance between two
labeled contour trees (which are special types of Reeb graphs that arise from
simply-connected domains). In the case of merge trees, the notion of the
labeled interleaving distance was used by Gasparovic et al. to prove that the
(ordinary) interleaving distance on the set of (unlabeled) merge trees is
intrinsic. As our final contribution, we present counterexamples showing that,
on the contrary, the (ordinary) interleaving distance on (unlabeled) Reeb
graphs (and contour trees) is not intrinsic. It turns out that, under mild
conditions on the labelings, the labeled interleaving distance is a metric on
isomorphism classes of Reeb graphs, analogous to the ordinary interleaving
distance. This provides new metrics on large classes of Reeb graphs.
