sfplot is a Python package for spatial structure analysis in spatial omics data. It implements the Search-and-Find Plot (SFplot) / Cell-GPS workflow used in our manuscript to quantify multiscale tissue architecture, compute cophenetic distance-based structure maps, and analyze cell-cell or transcript-cell spatial relationships.

This repository is being maintained as the code companion for manuscript review and future reuse.

• Computes searcher-findee distance matrices from spatial coordinates and cell labels.
• Builds cophenetic distance matrices and StructureMap heatmaps from AnnData objects or plain pandas tables.
• Loads 10x Xenium outputs and prepares them for downstream spatial analysis.
• Provides a table-bundle Xenium loader that assembles cells.parquet, official *_cell_groups.csv, and cell_feature_matrix.h5 without requiring the spatialdata_io dependency chain.
• Supports transcript-by-cell analysis for locating transcripts relative to cell types.
• Includes memory-optimized workflows for large datasets.
• Provides plotting utilities such as clustered heatmaps, circular dendrograms, and related summary figures.

• src/sfplot/: core implementation.
• tests/: package tests and smoke checks.
• docs/: Sphinx documentation.
• sfplot-manuscript/: manuscript-specific notebooks, figures, and derived outputs.
• benchmarking/: benchmarking-related material.
• segmentation_methods/: supporting segmentation workflows.

Install directly from GitHub:

pip install git+https://github.com/hutaobo/sfplot.git

For local development or reviewer inspection:

git clone https://github.com/hutaobo/sfplot.git
cd sfplot
pip install -e .

The package requires Python 3.9 or later.

The minimal input is a table with spatial coordinates and a cell-type column.

import pandas as pd
from sfplot import compute_cophenetic_distances_from_df, plot_cophenetic_heatmap

df = pd.DataFrame(
    {
        "x": [0, 1, 5, 6],
        "y": [0, 1, 5, 6],
        "celltype": ["A", "A", "B", "B"],
    }
)

row_coph, col_coph = compute_cophenetic_distances_from_df(
    df=df,
    x_col="x",
    y_col="y",
    celltype_col="celltype",
)

plot_cophenetic_heatmap(
    row_coph,
    matrix_name="row_coph",
    output_dir="output",
    output_filename="StructureMap_example.pdf",
    sample="Example",
)

from sfplot import load_xenium_data, load_xenium_table_bundle, compute_cophenetic_distances_from_adata

# Legacy `spatialdata_io` route
adata = load_xenium_data("/path/to/xenium/run", normalize=False)

# Stable table-bundle route used for the Atera Xenium benchmark
adata = load_xenium_table_bundle("/path/to/xenium/run", normalize=False)

row_coph, col_coph = compute_cophenetic_distances_from_adata(
    adata,
    cluster_col="Cluster",
    output_dir="output",
)

• load_xenium_data: load and preprocess Xenium data.
• load_xenium_table_bundle: load Xenium data from cells.parquet + *_cell_groups.csv + cell_feature_matrix.h5 when spatialdata_io is unavailable or unstable.
• compute_cophenetic_distances_from_df: compute structure matrices from a coordinate table.
• compute_weighted_searcher_findee_distance_matrix_from_df: weighted searcher-findee kernel for entity, pathway, or LR analysis.
• compute_weighted_cophenetic_distances_from_df: weighted StructureMap wrapper over the weighted kernel.
• compute_cophenetic_distances_from_adata: compute structure matrices from AnnData.
• compute_entity_to_cell_topology: generalize t_and_c from transcripts to arbitrary weighted entities.
• compute_entity_structuremap: build StructureMap-style topology among arbitrary weighted entities.
• plot_cophenetic_heatmap: generate StructureMap and related clustered heatmaps.
• transcript_by_cell_analysis: analyze transcript-to-cell spatial structure at scale.
• ligand_receptor_topology_analysis: score sender→receiver ligand-receptor candidates using topology, structure compatibility, and local contact.
• ligand_receptor_target_consistency: add a NicheNet-style downstream target-consistency layer.
• compute_pathway_activity_matrix: compute rank-based or weighted pathway activities per cell.
• pathway_topology_analysis: analyze pathway-to-cell and pathway-to-pathway spatial topology.
• compute_cophenetic_distances_from_df_memory_opt: memory-aware alternative for large tables.
• plot_circular_dendrogram_pycirclize: circular dendrogram visualization.

• The package code used for the manuscript is in src/sfplot/.
• Manuscript-facing notebooks and generated figure assets are kept in sfplot-manuscript/.
• Raw experimental datasets are not bundled in this repository because of size and distribution constraints. The code expects standard spatial omics outputs such as Xenium folders or tabular coordinate inputs.
• When an sfplot_tbc_formal_wta/results-style directory is already available, the LR and pathway topology extensions are designed to reuse its t_and_c_result_*.csv and StructureMap_table_*.csv outputs as the preferred gene-level topology anchors before falling back to recomputation.
• load_xenium_data depends on a compatible spatialdata_io / spatialdata / ome_zarr / zarr stack. For reviewer reproduction on environments where that stack is mismatched, prefer load_xenium_table_bundle.
• A short repository walkthrough is available in REVIEWER_GUIDE.md.

Sphinx documentation sources are available in docs/.

If you use this repository in connection with manuscript review, please cite the associated manuscript:

Cophenetic Spatial Topology Embedding reveals multiscale tissue architecture in spatial omics

This project is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.