Cell type refinement

When a Cell Clusters element is provided in Clusters, the initial predicted cell types are refined where possible, such that cells in the same cluster either have the same predicted cell type or share a parent cell type:

Consider a cluster where the following cell types are predicted:

T lymphocytes are the most frequent cell type, but since they constitute of less than 70% (set by `Minimum dominant cell type in cluster (%)') of the cells, refinement will not be performed.

Image lymphocytes
Figure 8.3: View of the QIAGEN Cell Ontology showing lymphocytes, T lymphocytes, alpha-beta T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes.

However, alpha-beta T lymphocytes have T lymphocytes as a parent cell type, and T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes have lymphocytes as a parent cell type (figure 8.3). Using `Include parent cell type in dominant cell type calculation', the frequency for the parent cell types is calculated:

Lymphocytes represent the dominant cell type since their percentage exceeds `Minimum dominant cell type in cluster (%)'. The remaining 15% of the cells will therefore be refined as lymphocytes.