| 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 correspond 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 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 window. Specific
behaviors include printing the workspace structure or single graph,
as well as a set of graphs, layouts, and full report generation.
A novel feature of FlowJo is its ability to generate
movies from flow 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 or the event number during the sample
collection.
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.
|