cytoSet-class {rflowcyt} | R Documentation

## 'cytoSet': a class for storing raw data from a quantitative cell-based assay

### Description

This class is a container for a set of `cytoFrame` objects

### Creating Objects

Objects can be created using the function `readCytoSet` or via
`new('cytoSet,`
`frames = ...., # environment with cytoFrames`
`phenoData = .... # object of class phenoData`
`colnames = .... # object of class character`
`)`

### Slots

`frames`:
  An `environment` containing one or more `cytoFrame` objects.
`phenoData`:
  A `phenoData`. Each row corresponds to one of the cytoFrames in the `frames` slot. It is mandatory that the pData has column named `name`
`colnames`:
  A `character` object with the (common) column names of all the data matrices in the cytoFrames.

### Methods

[, [[
  subsetting. If `x` is `cytoSet`, then `x[i]` returns a `cytoSet` object, and `x[[i]]` a `cytoFrame` object. The semantics is similar to the behavior of the subsetting operators for lists.
colnames, colnames<-
  extract or replace the `colnames` slot.
phenoData, phenoData<-
  extract or replace the `phenoData` slot.
show
  display summary.

### Important note on storage and performance

The bulk of the data in a `cytoSet` object is stored in an `environment`, and is therefore not automatically copied when the `cytoSet` object is copied. If `x` is an object of class `cytoSet`, then the code

    y <- x

will create a an object `y` that contains copies of the `phenoData` and administrative data in `x`, but refers to the same environment with the actual fluorescence data. See below for how to create proper copies.

The reason for this is performance. The pass-by-value semantics of function calls in `R` can result in numerous copies of the same data object being made in the course of a series of nested function calls. If the data object is large, this can result in a considerable cost of memory and performance. `cytoSet` objects are intended to contain experimental data in the order of hundreds of Megabytes, which can effectively be treated as read-only: typical tasks are the extraction of subsets and the calculation of summary statistics. This is afforded by the design of the `cytoSet` class: an object of that class contains a `phenoData` slot, some administrative information, and a reference to an environment with the fluorescence data; when it is copied, only the reference is copied, but not the potentially large set of fluorescence data themselves.

However, note that subsetting operations, such as

    y <- x[i]

do create proper copies, including a copy of the appropriate part of the fluorescence data, as it should be expected. Thus, to make a proper copy of a `cytoSet` `x`, use

    y <- x[seq(along=x)]

### Author(s)

Wolfgang Huber http://www.ebi.ac.uk/huber

### See Also

`readCytoSet`, `cytoFrame-class`

### Examples

    if (require(prada)) {
    cset<-readCytoSet(path=system.file("extdata", package="prada"),
      pattern="[A-Z][0-9][0-9]$")
    cset
    pData(cset)
    cset[[1]]
    cset[["fas-Bcl2-plate323-04-04.A02"]]
    cset["fas-Bcl2-plate323-04-04.A02"]
    cset[1:3]
    cset[[1]] <- exprs(cset[[1]])[1:100, ]

    plot(cset[[2]])
    }

    if (require(rfcdmin) && require(prada)) {

     ##obtaining the location of the fcs files in the data
      pathFiles<-system.file("bccrc", package="rfcdmin")
      drugFiles<-dir(pathFiles)

     ## reading in the FCS files
      drugData<-readCytoSet(path=system.file("bccrc", package="rfcdmin"),
          pattern="[A-Z][0-9][0-9]$")
      }

[Package rflowcyt version 1.14.0 Index]