flowDensity: reproducing manual gating of flow cytometry data by automated density-based cell population identification.

SUMMARY: flowDensity facilitates reproducible, high-throughput analysis of flow cytometry data by automating a predefined manual gating approach. The algorithm is based on a sequential bivariate gating approach that generates a set of predefined cell populations. It chooses the best cut-off for individual markers using characteristics of the density distribution. The Supplementary Material is linked to the online version of the manuscript. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: R source code freely available through BioConductor (http://master.bioconductor.org/packages/devel/bioc/html/flowDensity.html.). Data available from FlowRepository.org (dataset FR-FCM-ZZBW). CONTACT: rbrinkman@bccrc.ca SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

flowCL: ontology-based cell population labelling in flow cytometry.

MOTIVATION: Finding one or more cell populations of interest, such as those correlating to a specific disease, is critical when analysing flow cytometry data. However, labelling of cell populations is not well defined, making it difficult to integrate the output of algorithms to external knowledge sources. RESULTS: We developed flowCL, a software package that performs semantic labelling of cell populations based on their surface markers and applied it to labelling of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies Human Immunology Project Consortium lyoplate populations as a use case. CONCLUSION: By providing automated labelling of cell populations based on their immunophenotype, flowCL allows for unambiguous and reproducible identification of standardized cell types. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Code, R script and documentation are available under the Artistic 2.0 license through Bioconductor (http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/devel/bioc/html/flowCL.html). CONTACT: rbrinkman@bccrc.ca SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.