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wtf is spddb?

zafar-lab/spddb — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

3Jupyter NotebookAudience · researcherComplexity · 4/5Setup · moderate

TL;DR

A benchmarking toolkit that compares methods for estimating cell types and detecting tissue regions in spatial transcriptomics data.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Spatial deconvolution
      Domain detection
      Evaluation metrics
    Tech stack
      Python
      Jupyter Notebook
      Conda
    Use cases
      Method benchmarking
      Synthetic data generation
      Dataset repository
    Audience
      Researchers
      Bioinformaticians

Code map

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Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Compare different spatial deconvolution methods on the same benchmark data.

REASON 2

Evaluate domain detection methods using a shared set of metrics.

REASON 3

Generate synthetic spatial transcriptomics data with SynthST for testing new methods.

What's in the stack?

PythonJupyter NotebookConda

How it stacks up

zafar-lab/spddbabdurrafey237/rag-chatbothumancompatibleai/pareto
Stars333
LanguageJupyter NotebookJupyter NotebookJupyter Notebook
Setup difficultymoderatemoderateeasy
Complexity4/53/52/5
Audienceresearchergeneralresearcher

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 1h+

Requires setting up separate conda environments per benchmarking method from provided yml files.

The README does not state a license, so usage rights are unclear.

Wtf does this do

spDDB is a research toolkit for benchmarking methods used in spatial transcriptomics, a type of biology experiment that measures gene activity while keeping track of where in a tissue each measurement came from. The repository focuses on two computational tasks: spatial deconvolution, which estimates what mix of cell types is present at each spot in a tissue sample, and domain detection, which groups spots into regions that share similar biological characteristics. The project provides everything needed to run a fair comparison across methods. It includes conda environment files for each benchmarking method so researchers can install matching dependencies without conflicts, a synthetic data generator called SynthST for creating artificial spatial transcriptomics data and cell type proportions, and a collection of evaluation metrics covering bivariate spatial relationships, the shapes formed by different cell types, and rare cell type detection. The repository also links to a companion website hosting synthetic datasets that can be downloaded separately, and it includes a real dataset repository spanning tissues from brain, cancer, and other organs, collected across different species and spatial transcriptomics technologies. To get started, users clone the repository and create a conda environment from a provided yml file, first for SynthST and then for whichever benchmarking method they want to test, activating each environment before running it. The project comes from the Zafar Lab and is described in an accompanying research paper, credited to Ajita Shree, Aditya V, Tanush Kumar and Hamim Zafar. Contributions are welcome through GitHub issues for bug reports and questions, or through forking the repository and submitting a pull request for larger changes. The README does not state a specific license for the code.

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
Help me set up a conda environment from spDDB's yml files to run a spatial deconvolution benchmark.
Prompt 2
Explain how SynthST generates synthetic spatial transcriptomics data and cell type proportions.
Prompt 3
Walk me through comparing my own spatial deconvolution method against spDDB's benchmark metrics.
Prompt 4
Show me how bivariate spatial metrics are used to evaluate domain detection results in spDDB.

Frequently asked questions

wtf is spddb?

A benchmarking toolkit that compares methods for estimating cell types and detecting tissue regions in spatial transcriptomics data.

What language is spddb written in?

Mainly Jupyter Notebook. The stack also includes Python, Jupyter Notebook, Conda.

What license does spddb use?

The README does not state a license, so usage rights are unclear.

How hard is spddb to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 1h+ to a first successful run.

Who is spddb for?

Mainly researcher.

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