Comparison of Multiple Weighted Hierarchies: Visual Analytics for Microbe Community Profiling

We propose visual analytics techniques to support concurrent comparison of hundreds of cumulatively weighted instances of a single hierarchy. This includes a node‐link representation of the hierarchy where nodes depict the weights of all instances with high‐density heat maps that are grouped and aligned to ease cross‐referencing. Hierarchy exploration is facilitated by smoothly animated expansion and collapse of its branches. Detailed information about hierarchy structure, weights, and meta‐data is provided by secondary linked visualizations. These techniques have been implemented in a prototype tool, in which the computational analysis concerns have been strictly separated from the visualization concerns. The analysis algorithms are extensible via a script engine. We discuss the effectiveness of our techniques for the visual analytic process of microbe community profiling experts.