BiotaViz is a microbiome compositional data standard which offers a convenient human readable format over multiple phylogenetic levels, while also providing machine readable compatibility with other standards such as BIOM through various modules and extensions.
Image also available on DockerHub
When using the BiotaViz standard and its associated tools, please make sure to reference this GitHub page.
BiotaViz, a microbiota compositional data standard for general application in microbiome research.
Thomas H.A. Ederveen and Jos Boekhorst et al., 2026.
The BiotaViz standard is based on earlier work by Michiel Westenberg et al., 2014, from the University of Technology Eindhoven, which was published as a Conference Poster at the VIZBI conference for Visualizing Biological Data. The poster describes BiotaViz as a tool for large-scale comparison and visualization of microbial community composition with navigable taxonomy and abundance heat maps. The concept of BiotaViz had earlier been implemented as part of visual analytics techniques as outlined in the Computer Graphics Forum journal.
BiotaViz and COMBat: Tools for visual exploration of annotation data.
Michiel A. Westenberg, Poster presented at VIZBI 2014 (Visualizing Biological Data). [web.archive]
Comparison of Multiple Weighted Hierarchies: Visual Analytics for Microbe Community Profiling.
Kasper Dinkla, Michiel A. Westenberg, Harro M. Timmerman, Jos Boekhorst, Sacha A.F.T. van Hijum and Jack J. van Wijk,
Computer Graphics Forum, Jun;30:1141-1150, 2011. [doi]