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FlowJo has a great number of output capabilities,
encompassing graphics, statistics, or raw data. It supports
printing from all the different views of data, as well as copying
data through the clipboard or file system. FlowJo contains a special
editor for the creation of Tables (statistical outputs) and Layouts
(graphical outputs).
This section is divided into six parts, each discussing different
aspects of generating output out of FlowJo.
A table
is a text file containing one or more rows of data, that corresponds
to frequencies and other statistics derived from a single sample.
The table editor lets you construct the set of statistics, and then
generates them for every sample in the current group.
A layout
is a graphical image, composed of individual elements that represent
boxes, lines, text and graphs. Elements are created by dragging
populations and statistics from the workspace into the canvas of
the layout editor.
Both tables and layouts can perform batch output
generation using the current sample Group as the set of data files
from which to draw information. You should be familiar with
the use of groups
to use Tables and Layouts efficiently.
Printing
is supported in all sections of FlowJo. The print command
has different behaviors depending on the type of the frontmost window.
Specific behaviors include printing the workspace structure or single
graph, as well as set of graphs, layouts, and full report generation.
A novel feature of FlowJo is its ability to generate
movies
from its data. Any graph window can add a third dimension
to the view by slicing views of the events by a third parameter.
You can also view any graph as a function of time during the sample
collection, a useful addition to Kinetics analysis.
You can also export raw data for analysis by other programs.
You can export any gated population (or the whole sample), as its
own FCS file or as tab-delimited text. You can quickly generate
small subset files, optionally reducing the event count or even
the parameter list. You can use this function to reformat
FCS data into spreadsheet-friendly text.
Histograms (and Cell Cycle graphs and Kinetics
graphs) can be exported as well. Here you will get two columns
of "XY" data, where the first column is the channel number (or time
for Kinetics), and the Y value is the event count or processed statistic.
By default, whenever you select "Copy" (or press command-C) when
viewing a histogram, cell cycle, or kinetics graph, FlowJo puts
two distinct items into the clipboard: one is a graphic picture
of the data (that you can paste into graphics applications); the
other is a text representation of the data (that you can paste into
a spreadsheet). Sometimes graphics applications will erroneously
pick the text item for pasting; if this happens to you, you can
ask FlowJo not to export the text data from these graphs (via the
Preferences
dialog).
Finally, some notes on publication
quality graphics out of FlowJo.
Several nitty gritty details of data formats are explained in order
to support post-processing of FlowJo's output. Also included
is the gallery
of FlowJo images, as examples of what kinds of output you can create.
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