Redeeming Pedigree Data with an Interactive Error Cleaning Visualisation

We describe a visual data cleansing application for pedigree genotype data, which is used to redeem otherwise unusable pedigree data sets. Biologists and bioinformaticians dynamically and iteratively mask pieces of information from a dirty data set and graduate towards a usable cleaned version of the data, which can then be saved and used in ongoing biological analyses. Cleansing of such data is complicated over and above simple error cleaning in that change or masking of the pedigree structure may shift errors to new parts of the pedigree. Thus a branching history of data manipulations is kept to allow users to restore the data and visualisation to any of the previous states it has travelled through.