emObject: An open-source domain-specific data abstraction for spatial omics

Recent advances in high-parameter spatial biology have yielded a rapidly growing new class of biological data, allowing researchers to more comprehensively characterize cellular state and morphology in native tissue context. However, spatial biology lacks a cohesive data abstraction on which to build novel computational tools and algorithms, making it difficult to fully leverage these emergent data. Here, we present emObject, a domain-specific data abstraction for spatial biology data and experiments. We demonstrate the simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility of emObject for a range of spatial omics data types, including the analysis of Visium, MIBI, and CODEX data, as well as for integrated spatial multiomic experiments.