An Independent Review of Five Microarray Analysis Software Applications
A paper at InfoVis 2004 (held in conjunction with the IEEE CS Visualization Conferences -- October 10-12, 2004 in Austin, Texas) presented findings of a recent independent review of five microarray analysis software applications, including Spotfire DecisionSite. In the study, Spotfire DecisionSite outperformed other solutions in several areas, including learning time, time to first insight, number of insights, insight value, and level of confidence. Spotfire has received permission from the study researchers and IEEE to share the paper with you in its entirety.For the complete independent review, download the PDF of the paper.
Copyright © 2004 IEEE. Reprinted, with permission, from InfoVis2004, October 10-12, Austin, Texas.
Researchers at the Dept. of Computer Science and Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia conducted a study to assess the value of five microarray data visualization and analysis tools, including Spotfire DecisionSite for Functional Genomics.
Data was analyzed by such metrics as time series and treatment groups. Participants included senior researchers with extensive experience in microarray data analysis, less experienced researchers and IT professionals supporting microarray analysis. A number of measures were taken to summarize questions answered, time spent, amount learned, and insights gained in order to assess the overall value of the applications.
Study conclusions reflect the superior value of DecisionSite in facilitating the process of gaining biological insight into the role of genes in complex biological systems. Study participants reported that DecisionSite provided the largest value in total insight gained. Results show that participants using DecisionSite's interactive, visual analytics gained significant insight into biological relevance from increasingly large and complex experiments. Confirming and generating new hypotheses and gaining valuable insights were key differentiators of DecisionSite in this study.
Some key findings include:
"Spotfire, despite having a large feature set, has a learning time almost equivalent to the simple tools, which is commendable"
"Spotfire users were also fairly quick to first insight, while competing software users took twice as long"
"Count of insights was highest for Spotfire"
"Insight value was highest for Spotfire. Participants using Spotfire gained significantly more insight value than those using competing software"
"Participants using Spotfire felt they learned much more from the data as compared to [competing products]"
"Analyzing data in multiple visual representations gave Spotfire users more confidence that they did not miss any information"