Visualization in Biology and Medicine - Scientific Visualization: Uncertainty, Multifield, Biomedical, and Scalable Visualization - page 238

Fig. 22.2 Pathline [ 29 ], an interactive tool for the visualization of comparative functional genomics
data. The left side shows a linearized pathway representation and the right side shows a detailed
curvemap display. Pathline is the first tool to integrate data for multiple genes, time points, species,
and pathways
Pathline consists of two novel visual representations, a linearized pathway
representation and a detailed curvemap display, shown on the left and right sides
of Fig. 22.2 respectively. The linearized pathway representation shows molecular
pathways as an ordered list of nodes and edges for a visually concise overview that
supports the comparison of quantitative data along pathways. The topology of the
pathway is shown as secondary information using several types of stylized marks.
The curvemap display shows time series data with small multiples of filled line charts
and overlaid curves that support comparison of temporal gene expression across mul-
tiple species. The columns of the curvemap display are populated with genes selected
by the user within the pathway representation view.
Through a series of case studies with our biology collaborators, we were able to
validate that Pathline can show known information more clearly than could be seen
with their previous tools. Furthermore, the biologists directly attribute new insights
into their data to the use of Pathline. More information about Pathline, as well as
source code, executables, and example data, can be found at http://pathline.org .