BioInfograph: An Online Tool to Design and Display Multi-Panel Scientific Figure Interactively

Many fit-for-purpose bioinformatics tools generate plots to interpret complex biological data and illustrate findings. However, assembling individual plots in different formats from various sources into one high-resolution figure in the desired layout requires mastery of commercial tools or even programming skills. In addition, it is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process even for a computationally savvy scientist who frequently takes a trial-and-error iterative approach to get satisfactory results. To address the challenge, we developed bioInfograph, a web-based tool that allows users to interactively arrange high-resolution images in diversified formats, mainly Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), to produce one multi-panel publication-quality composite figure in both PDF and HTML formats in a user-friendly manner, requiring no programming skills. It solves stylesheet conflicts of coexisting SVG plots, integrates a rich-text editor, and allows creative design by providing advanced functionalities like image transparency, controlled vertical stacking of plots, versatile image formats, and layout templates. To highlight, the sharable interactive HTML output with zoom-in function is a unique feature not seen in any other similar tools. In the end, we make the online tool publicly available at while releasing the source code & nbsp;at https://github.com/baohongz/bioInfograph under MIT open-source license.

Automated summary

BioInfograph is a web-based tool that allows users to interactively arrange high-resolution images in diversified formats to produce a publication-quality composite figure in both PDF and HTML formats without the need for programming skills. It solves stylesheet conflicts, integrates a rich-text editor, and offers unique interactive HTML output with zoom-in function.