i2dash: Creation of Flexible, Interactive, and Web-based Dashboards for Visualization of Omics Data

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics
• Data Visualization
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Omics data analysis generates complex results requiring intuitive visualization.
• Web-based dashboards are popular for displaying omics data visualizations.
• Integrating automated omics data processing pipelines with dynamic dashboards is challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present i2dash, an R package for programmatic creation of customized, interactive dashboards.
• To facilitate the separation of data analysis and visualization tasks.
• To provide a tool compatible with R-based analysis pipelines.

Main Methods:

• Developed i2dash as an R package.
• Implemented support for interactive, responsive, and linked visualizations.
• Designed modularity for extensions, including a single-cell RNA sequencing example.
• Provided a containerized solution for cloud deployment.

Main Results:

• i2dash enables programmatic creation of customized, interactive dashboards for omics data.
• The package supports linked visualizations and predefined graphical layouts.
• An extension for single-cell RNA sequencing data visualization was developed.
• Containerization facilitates large-scale deployment and cloud sharing.

Conclusions:

• i2dash addresses the need for integrated omics data processing and interactive dashboard visualization.
• The R package is suitable for bioinformatics facilities and promotes data analysis/visualization separation.
• i2dash offers a flexible, extensible, and deployable solution for omics data visualization.