Figure 5. Comparative analysis of automated gating performance by different methods.

We compared the results of lymphocyte gating for two representative samples (s6a06, s6a07 – the last two time points for Patient 6 in GvHD data). For both samples, we ran 2 well-known methods, flowCore and SamSpectral, and flowScape to automatically identify the lymphocyte populations (as defined in Ellis et al. [43]). While flowCore gate (red ellipse) was unable to detect the target population automatically in either sample, SamSpectral gated it (black outline) it correctly in only the sample to the left. On the other hand, due to the sparseness of the corresponding population in the sample to the right, SamSpectral failed to isolate it. In contrast, flowScape’s dynamic, sample-specific templates captured the lymphocyte populations accurately in both samples in spite of their inter-sample variation in locations, densities and shapes (green outline).