SEURAT: Visual analytics for the integrated analysis of microarray data

BACKGROUND: In translational cancer research, gene expression data is collected together with clinical data and genomic data arising from other chip based high throughput technologies. Software tools for the joint analysis of such high dimensional data sets together with clinical data are required. RESULTS: We have developed an open source software tool which provides interactive visualization capability for the integrated analysis of high-dimensional gene expression data together with associated clinical data, array CGH data and SNP array data. The different data types are organized by a comprehensive data manager. Interactive tools are provided for all graphics: heatmaps, dendrograms, barcharts, histograms, eventcharts and a chromosome browser, which displays genetic variations along the genome. All graphics are dynamic and fully linked so that any object selected in a graphic will be highlighted in all other graphics. For exploratory data analysis the software provides unsupervised data analytics like clustering, seriation algorithms and biclustering algorithms. CONCLUSIONS: The SEURAT software meets the growing needs of researchers to perform joint analysis of gene expression, genomical and clinical data.