Heatmaps and Calendar Heatmaps allow broader overview of the data as compared to bar charts and grouped bar charts. The settings for both Heatmaps and Calendar Heatmaps are shared and have a common settings  next to it.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps are particularly useful when comparing a large number of samples.

To create a Heatmap,

  1. Load your data and selections appropriately.
  2. Check the Heatmap settings by clicking on the  button next to the Heatmap / Calendar Heatmap buttons.
  3. Click the  button
  4. The Heatmap should be displayed with the Sample Titles on top written in the color of the samples and the glycan IDs on the left.
  5. You can zoom in and out of the Heatmap and even click and drag to move it around.
  6. Mouse over on a tile, shows detailed information about the specific data point and you can even view the glycan structure if the Glycan Structure drawer is open.
  7. Clicking on a tile highlights the row and column for that tile, while fading away the rest of the data. Clicking on the same tile again restores the heatmap.
  8. Click on the Rotate Heatmap  Rotate Heatmap Button, toggles rotation of the heatmap 90° so that the columns and rows are interchanged. This allows users to compare either large number of data width-wise or height-wise.

Calendar Heatmaps

Calendar Heatmaps offers another visualization tool which is particularly useful if there are a large number of glycans to be viewed, which can make Heatmaps extremely long vertically.

To create a Calendar Heatmap,

  1. Load your data and selections appropriately.
  2. Check the Calendar Heatmap settings by clicking on the  button next to the Heatmap / Calendar Heatmap buttons.
  3. Click the  button.
  4. The Calendar Heatmap should be displayed with the Sample Titles on top written in the color of the samples and the glycan data goes in a block below it from top to bottom and then to the next column from top to bottom within the square/rectangular grid.
  5. Just like the Heatmap, you can zoom in and out of the Calendar Heatmap and even click and drag to move it around.
  6. Mouse over on a tile, shows detailed information about the specific data point and you can even view the glycan structure if the Glycan Structure drawer is open.

Settings for Heatmaps and Calendar Heatmaps

The settings for both the Heatmaps and the Calendar Heatmaps can be found by clicking the Heatmap Graph Settings cog-wheel next to the Calendar Heatmap button.

  1. Grid Size: determines the size of the individual tiles in the Heatmaps and Calendar Heatmaps
  2. The color scale for both heatmaps and calendar heatmaps can be controlled by filling in the Value : Color pairs in the settings. By default the Values are scaled to the outputs obtained by the GenePix Microarray System by Molecular Devices, and the colors range from Black to Red to Yellow. However, these can be scaled to the user’s liking. The colors between the values are interpolated automatically using D3js scale function. The videos above shows how you can change the color scale.