Introduction
Rapid advances in flow cytometry and other single-cell technologies have enabled high-dimensional, high-throughput measurements of individual cells. Using these single-cell assays, numerous questions about the heterogeneity of single-cell populations can now be addressed. COMPASS provides a computational framework that enables unbiased polyfunctionality analysis of antigen-specific T-cell subsets.
COMPASS uses a Bayesian hierarchical framework to model all observed functional cell-subsets simultaneously, and selects the subsets most likely to exhibit an antigen-specific response, while regularizing the small cell counts that often arise in multi-parameter space. The cell-subset responses are quantified by a set of posterior probabilities, which can be used to profile a subject’s immune response such as to infection or vaccination.
Shiny Application
Shiny is an R package that allows users to develop web applications powered by R. The COMPASS package is distributed with a function, shinyCOMPASS, that allows users to easily visualize the results of a COMPASS model fit. With this, users can easily and interactively explore the results of a COMPASS fit in their browser, started directly from an R session.
Examples of the COMPASS Shiny application are available here: