Fig. 1

A schematic drawing illustrating the process to transform tabulated gene expression data into AIOs. a Tabulated expression data in normalized format. b Rescaling the expression data into the range of digital image (1 byte, 0–255). c Arranging the expression data from an individual into an artificial image object (AIO). An AIO could be a grayscale image as shown here (d) or a colored image in which multiple layers of data could be integrated into an AIO