shinyDSP

This package provides functionality to combine the existing pieces of the transcriptome data and results, making it easier to generate insightful observations and hypothesis. Its usage is made easy with a Shiny application, combining the benefits of interactivity and reproducibility e.g. by capturing the features and gene sets of interest highlighted during the live session, and creating an HTML report as an artifact where text, code, and output coexist. Using the GeneTonicList as a standardized container for all the required components, it is possible to simplify the generation of multiple visualizations and summaries.

standR is an user-friendly R package providing functions to assist conducting good-practice analysis of Nanostring's GeoMX DSP data. All functions in the package are built based on the SpatialExperiment object, allowing integration into various spatial transcriptomics-related packages from Bioconductor. standR allows data inspection, quality control, normalization, batch correction and evaluation with informative visualizations.

Intuitive framework for identifying spatially variable genes (SVGs) and differential spatial variable pattern (DSP) between conditions via edgeR, a popular method for performing differential expression analyses. Based on pre-annotated spatial clusters as summarized spatial information, DESpace models gene expression using a negative binomial (NB), via edgeR, with spatial clusters as covariates. SVGs are then identified by testing the significance of spatial clusters. For multi-sample, multi-condition datasets, we again fit a NB model via edgeR, incorporating spatial clusters, conditions and their interactions as covariates. DSP genes-representing differences in spatial gene expression patterns across experimental conditions-are identified by testing the interaction between spatial clusters and conditions.

This package contains the function to find marker genes for image-based spatial transcriptomics data. There are functions to create spatial vectors from the cell and transcript coordiantes, which are passed as inputs to find marker genes. Marker genes are detected for every cluster by two approaches. The first approach is by permtuation testing, which is implmented in parallel for finding marker genes for one sample study. The other approach is to build a linear model for every gene. This approach can account for multiple samples and backgound noise.

Spatial-eXpression-R (spacexr) is a package for analyzing cell types in spatial transcriptomics data. This implementation is a fork of the spacexr GitHub repo (https://github.com/dmcable/spacexr), adapted to work with Bioconductor objects. The original package implements two statistical methods: RCTD for learning cell types and CSIDE for inferring cell type-specific differential expression. Currently, this fork only implements RCTD, which learns cell type profiles from annotated RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) reference data and uses these profiles to identify cell types in spatial transcriptomic pixels while accounting for platform-specific effects. Future releases will include an implementation of CSIDE.

SpNeigh provides methods for neighborhood-aware analysis of spatial transcriptomics data. It supports boundary detection, spatial weighting (centroid- and boundary-based), spatially informed differential expression using spline-based models, and spatial enrichment analysis via the Spatial Enrichment Index (SEI). Designed for compatibility with Seurat objects, SpatialExperiment objects and spatial data frames, SpNeigh enables interpretable, publication-ready analysis of spatial gene expression patterns.