ATHENA: analysis of tumor heterogeneity from spatial omics measurements

A Summary: Tumor heterogeneity has emerged as a fundamental property of most human cancers, with broad implications for diagnosis and treatment. Recently, spatial omics have enabled spatial tumor profiling, however computational resources that exploit the measurements to quantify tumor heterogeneity in a spatially aware manner are largely missing. We present ATHENA (Analysis of Tumor HEterogeNeity from spAtial omics measurements), a computational framework that facilitates the visualization, processing and analysis of tumor heterogeneity from spatial omics measurements. ATHENA uses graph representations of tumors and bundles together a large collection of established and novel heterogeneity scores that quantify different aspects of the complexity of tumor ecosystems.

Automated summary

Tumor heterogeneity is a fundamental property of most human cancers, and it has significant implications for diagnosis and treatment. However, there is a lack of computational resources to quantify tumor heterogeneity in a spatially aware manner using spatial omics measurements. In this study, we propose a computational framework called ATHENA, which enables the visualization, processing, and analysis of tumor heterogeneity from spatial omics measurements.