Spacewalk

Spacewalk is an interactive 3D visualization application for super-resolution microscopy data. Spacewalk supports integrated genomic analysis via a fully featured IGV genomics browser igv.js and Juicebox Hi-C map viewer juicebox.js

Try It Now

Spacewalk is hosted at Aiden Lab. Launch the main by clicking here.

Experience Spacewalk immediately with these demos:

• Ball & Stick Demo
  Chromatin centroids are rendered as balls, each colored according to its genomic location. Sticks (cylinders) connect the balls in the order they appear along the genomic range.

• Point Cloud Demo
  The point cloud is rendered as a collection of 3D point clusters, each point cluster corresponds to a specific genomic extent and is colored according to the genomic location of that extent.

Documentation

Visit our Documentation Site for:

• User Guide
• Developer Guide
• File Format Specifications
• Example Data

Features

• Interactive 3D visualization of genomic data
• Multiple visualization modes:
  • Ball & Stick for structural connections
  • Point Cloud for dense spatial data
• Integrated genomic views
• Shareable visualization states
• Support for various data formats
• Direct file loading via URL parameter or cross-origin postMessage

Loading Data from External Tools

Spacewalk can receive data files directly from external web applications, enabling seamless tool-to-viewer workflows without file downloads.

URL Parameter

Load a hosted file by passing its URL as a query parameter:

https://aidenlab.org/spacewalk/?file=https://example.com/data.sw&traceKey=0

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
file	Yes	—	URL to a .sw file
traceKey	No	0	Trace index to display
ensembleGroupKey	No	—	Ensemble group to load

postMessage API

Web applications that generate Spacewalk files in memory can send them directly without uploading or downloading. The sending app opens Spacewalk in a new tab, waits for a readiness signal, then transfers the file bytes via postMessage. See notes/external-file-loading.md for the full protocol specification.

swtool is the first application to use this capability — after converting a .swt file, users can click "Open in Spacewalk" to visualize the result immediately.

Development

Requirements

• Node.js
• npm

Setup

git clone https://github.com/aidenlab/spacewalk.git
cd spacewalk
npm install
npm start

Build

npm run build

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Version

Current version: 7.0.0