Pheno-mapper: an interactive toolbox for the visual exploration of phenomics data

Abstract

High-throughput technologies to collect field data have made observations possible at scale in several branches of life sciences. The data collected can range from the molecular level (genotypes) to physiological (phenotypic traits) and environmental observations (e.g., weather, soil conditions). These vast swathes of data, collectively referred to as phenomics data, represent a treasure trove of key scientific knowledge on the dynamics of the underlying biological system. However, extracting information and insights from these complex datasets remains a significant challenge owing to their multidimensionality and lack of prior knowledge about their complex structure. In this paper, we present Pheno-Mapper, an interactive toolbox for the exploratory analysis and visualization of large-scale phenomics data. Our approach uses the mapper framework to perform a topological analysis of the data, and subsequently render visual representations with built-in data analysis and machine learning capabilities. We demonstrate the utility of this new tool on real-world plant (e.g., maize) phenomics datasets. In comparison to existing approaches, the main advantage of Pheno-Mapper is that it provides rich, interactive capabilities in the exploratory analysis of phenomics data, and it integrates visual analytics with data analysis and machine learning in an easily extensible way. In particular, Pheno-Mapper allows the interactive selection of subpopulations guided by a topological summary of the data and applies data mining and machine learning to these selected subpopulations for in-depth exploration.