  Vertex centrality measures are a multi-purpose analysis tool, commonly used
in many application environments to retrieve information and unveil knowledge
from the graphs and network structural properties. However, the algorithms of
such metrics are expensive in terms of computational resources when running
real-time applications or massive real world networks. Thus, approximation
techniques have been developed and used to compute the measures in such
scenarios. In this paper, we demonstrate and analyze the use of neural network
learning algorithms to tackle such task and compare their performance in terms
of solution quality and computation time with other techniques from the
literature. Our work offers several contributions. We highlight both the pros
and cons of approximating centralities though neural learning. By empirical
means and statistics, we then show that the regression model generated with a
feedforward neural networks trained by the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is not
only the best option considering computational resources, but also achieves the
best solution quality for relevant applications and large-scale networks.
Keywords: Vertex Centrality Measures, Neural Networks, Complex Network Models,
Machine Learning, Regression Model
