Information visualization is in the core of bioinformatics, and over the time variety of interesting information visualization approaches have been developed to visualize the different type of biological information. This post is specifically targeted on circular/radial visualization in biological domain. Circular visualization techniques provide better utilization of the available space to represent information in an aesthetic and comprehensive manner. Circular/radial visualizations are highly regularized with stress on compact and focused presentation. There are 4 basic classes of circular/radial visualization techniques,

1. Polar Plot

• Tree (Visual Thesaurus, Sociograms, MoireGraphs, Hyperbolic Browser)

• Star (Starstruck, Neighbourhood Explorer, Sparkler, Star Coordinates)

2. Radial Space Filling

• Concentric (Fan chart, PieTree, Polar TreeMaps, Information Slices, Sunburst, InterRing)

• Spiral (RankSpiral, SpiralView)

• Euler (Zoomology, MoireTrees, PhylloTrees, Bubbleworld)

3. Ring

• Connected (Daisy Analyzer, VisAlert)

• Disconnected (Event Tunnel, SQiRL)

4. Spoked

For a comparison of the different circular/radial visualizations techniques please refer publications by Hanna et al and Draper et al. However, this basic classification alone is insufficient to capture the high order of variation among different radial visual representations. By combining the ideas of these basic visualization techniques we can create advanced hybrid patterns. Now onwards I will be describing variety of circular/radial visualization patterns in bioinformatics domain.

Osprey
Osprey is a network visualization system. Osprey facilitate visualization and manipulation of complex interaction networks in large-scale datasets. Osprey also provides several default network layouts options to avoid cluttered and clumpy representations. Layout options included in Osprey are: (a) Circular ; (b) concentric circle with five rings; (c) dual ring with highly connected nodes on the inside; (d) dual ring with highly connected nodes outside; (e) spoked dual ring; (f) default spoke.
SCONP
SCONP (Structural Classification Of Natural Products) tool arranges the scaffolds of the natural products in a star or tree-like representation. SCONP can be used as analysis tool or hypothesis-generating tool for charting of the chemical space explored by nature in the context of natural product inspired compound library design and development for chemical biology and medicinal chemistry research. Similar kind of charting can be used to explore the patented drug space to provide guidelines for future drug discovery research.