  The detection of groups of molecules that co-localize with histopathological
patterns or sub-structures is an important step to combine the rich
high-dimensional content of mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) with classic
histopathological staining. Here we present the evolution of GRINE to
COBI-GRINE, an interactive web tool that maps MSI data onto a graph structure
to detect communities of laterally similar distributed molecules and
co-visualizes the communities with Hematoxylin and Eosin (HE) stained images.
Thereby the tool enables biologists and pathologists to examine the MSI image
graph in a target-oriented manner and links molecular co-localization to
pathology. Another feature is the manual optimization of cluster results with
the assist of graph statistics in order to improve the community results. As
the graphs can become very complex, those statistics provide good heuristics to
support and accelerate the detection of sub-clusters and misclusterings. This
kind of edited cluster optimization allows the integration of expert background
knowledge into the clustering result and a more precise analysis of links
between molecular co-localization and pathology.
