HiGlass: Web based massive matrix display


HiGlass is a tool for displaying and comparing large matrices within a web page. Matrices are typically visualized as heatmaps. In the case of large matrices, the heatmaps are too large to render all at once. Instead, we aggregate their values and display summaries at lower resolution while allowing one to zoom in and explore them in greater detail.

Here is an example from a high-resolution HiC experiment (Rao et al. 2014):


This example is annotated with genomic information describing the genome positions along the top axis.

Because the most interesting information in HiC datasets happens to be along the diagonal of the matrix, we can rotate the entire display 45 degrees and display data along the diagonal. This format provides us with a convenient way to compare different datasets.


HiGlass is not limited to 2D data. It can be used just as easily as a plain genome browser.

Version: 0.1.1