Scalable visualization for high-dimensional single-cell data

Single-cell analysis can uncover the mysteries in the state of individual cells and enable us to construct new models about the analysis of heterogeneous tissues. State-of-the-art technologies for single-cell analysis have been developed to measure the properties of single-cells and detect hidden information. They are able to provide the measurements of dozens of features simultaneously in each cell. However, due to the high-dimensionality, heterogeneous complexity and sheer enormity of single-cell data, its interpretation is challenging. Thus, new methods to overcome high-dimensionality are necessary. Here, we present a computational tool that allows efficient visualization of high-dimensional single-cell data onto a low-dimensional (2D or 3D) space while preserving the similarity structure between single-cells. We first construct a network that can represent the similarity structure between the high-dimensional representations of single-cells, and then, embed this network into a low-dimensional space through an efficient online optimization method based on the idea of negative sampling. Using this approach, we can preserve the high-dimensional structure of single-cell data in an embedded low-dimensional space that facilitates visual analyses of the data.