A Mobile Tool for Interactive Visualisation of Genomics Data

Advancement in genomic research and technology has significantly improved our understandings of biology, health, and medicine. Genomics data are very complex and contain genotype and phenotype information. Health researchers have long known that many diseases such as cancer are hereditary. Gaining insight and understanding of such data would enable a better understanding of the correlation between genes and diseases, which could facilitate personalised treatment for the patients. Visualisations have been increasingly used to break the complexity of genomics data to guide better decisions. Unfortunately, research works on interactive visualisations of the genomics data on mobile devices and immersive platforms are still limited. This paper presents a new interactive visualisation and navigation of genomics data on the mobile platform. The visualisation provides an overview of the entire patient cohort in a 3D similarity-space environment as well as 2D detail views of genes of interests. We introduce a new algorithm that enables effective touch-based interaction and exploration of large number of items on small mobile screens. We illustrate the effectiveness of our platform through a childhood cancer dataset, B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) as well as a pilot qualitative study with the domain experts.