Clusters in Focus: A Simple and Robust Detail-On-Demand Dashboard for Patient Data

TL;DR

Clusters in Focus is an interactive dashboard that helps explore and compare data clusters across feature pairs in tabular datasets, aiding biomarker discovery and patient subgroup analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-panel visual analytics tool with a cluster similarity panel and ranked feature list for comprehensive data exploration.

Findings

Effective in revealing relationships between feature pairs

Facilitates identification of meaningful patient subgroups

Supports both detailed and broad data exploration

Abstract

Exploring tabular datasets to understand how different feature pairs partition data into meaningful cohorts is crucial in domains such as biomarker discovery, yet comparing clusters across multiple feature pair projections is challenging. We introduce Clusters in Focus, an interactive visual analytics dashboard designed to address this gap. Clusters in Focus employs a three-panel coordinated view: a Data Panel offers multiple perspectives (tabular, heatmap, condensed with histograms / SHAP values) for initial data exploration; a Selection Panel displays the 2D clustering (K-Means/DBSCAN) for a user-selected feature pair; and a novel Cluster Similarity Panel featuring two switchable views for comparing clusters. A ranked list enables the identification of top-matching feature pairs, while an interactive similarity matrix with reordering capabilities allows for the discovery of global structural patterns and groups of related features. This dual-view design supports both focused querying and broad visual exploration. A use case on a Parkinson's disease speech dataset demonstrates the tool's effectiveness in revealing relationships between different feature pairs characterizing the same patient subgroup.