shinyheatmap

The field of -omics, such as transcriptomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics, is known for producing large datasets, particularly in single-cell sequencing studies. However, visualizing such big data has posed technical challenges in biology due to limited computational resources and programming expertise. Heatmaps have been a popular tool for visualizing high-dimensional numerical data as a colored grid of cells, but efficiency and speed have often been critical considerations in successfully converting data into graphics.

To address this issue, a team of researchers has proposed a software tool called 'shinyheatmap.' It is an advanced, user-friendly heatmap software suite capable of efficiently creating highly customizable static and interactive heatmaps in a web browser. Unlike other heatmap software, shinyheatmap has a low memory footprint, making it particularly well-suited for the interactive visualization of extremely large datasets that cannot typically be computed in memory due to size restrictions.

One of the most significant features of shinyheatmap is its built-in high-performance web plug-in, fastheatmap, which allows for the rapid plotting of interactive heatmaps of datasets as large as 105-107 rows within seconds. This feature effectively shatters previous performance benchmarks of heatmap rendering speed, making it a valuable tool for researchers dealing with large datasets.

Shinyheatmap is also hosted online as a freely available web server with an intuitive graphical user interface that makes it easy for users to create and customize their heat maps.