nf_xpatial: A Reproducible Framework for Standardized Preprocessing and Clustering of Xenium Data
TL;DR
Overall, nf_xpatial streamlines the processing of Xenium data from platform outputs to integrated single-cell and spatial clustering datasets, providing a standardized starting point from which biologists can finetune parameters and proceed to hypothesis-driven spatial analyses.
Abstract
Recent advances in spatial transcriptomics have enabled the profiling of increasingly larger numbers of genes while retaining single-cell and subcellular resolution in situ. However, standardized bioinformatics workflows for analyzing these datasets have lagged behind, with existing pipelines focusing primarily on image processing and cell segmentation. To address this gap, we present nf_xpatial, a best-practices Nextflow pipeline for the downstream analysis of 10x Genomics Xenium data. The pipeline performs quality control, filtering, log and cell area normalization, multi-sample integration, and both expression-driven and spatially informed clustering across systematic parameter sweeps, allowing users to evaluate and compare clustering resolutions and spatial modeling parameters within a single reproducible run. Overall, nf_xpatial streamlines the processing of Xenium data from platform outputs to integrated single-cell and spatial clustering datasets, providing a standardized starting point from which biologists can finetune parameters and proceed to hypothesis-driven spatial analyses. Availability and implementation The source code and detailed documentation are freely available at https://github.com/U-BDS/nf_xpatial under the GPL-3 license. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data is provided.