cyt_violin: Violin Plots for Continuous Variables with Optional Grouping

In CytoProfile: Cytokine Profiling Analysis Tool

Violin Plots for Continuous Variables with Optional Grouping

Description

cyt_violin produces violin plots for each numeric variable in data, optionally grouped by one or more categorical variables. When grouping is not specified, the function behaves similarly to cyt_bp but uses violins instead of boxplots and supports pagination via the bin_size argument. When grouping is provided, a separate violin is drawn for each level (or interaction of levels) of the grouping variables. Users may optionally overlay boxplots within each violin to visualize the median and interquartile range.

Usage

cyt_violin(
  data,
  output_file = NULL,
  group_by = NULL,
  bin_size = 25,
  y_lim = NULL,
  scale = c("none", "log2", "log10", "zscore", "custom"),
  custom_fn = NULL,
  boxplot_overlay = FALSE
)

Arguments

data	A matrix or data frame containing numeric and categorical variables.
output_file	Optional string specifying the name of the file to be created. When NULL (default), plots are drawn on the current graphics device. Ensure that the file extension matches the desired format (e.g., ".pdf" for PDF output or ".png" for PNG output or .tiff for TIFF output).
group_by	Optional character vector specifying one or more columns to use for grouping. If NULL (default) no grouping is applied.
bin_size	Integer. Maximum number of violins per page when grouping is not used. Default is 25, mirroring cyt_bp.
y_lim	Optional numeric vector giving y‑axis limits for the plots. Applies to all plots.
scale	Character specifying a transformation for numeric variables. Accepts "none", "log2", "log10", "zscore", or "custom". When "custom", supply a function via custom_fn.
custom_fn	A user supplied function to transform numeric columns when scale = "custom".
boxplot_overlay	Logical. When TRUE, a narrow boxplot is drawn inside each violin to summarize the median and quartiles. Default is FALSE.

Value

Invisibly returns a list of ggplot objects. When output_file is provided, plots are written to the PDF file.

Author(s)

Shubh Saraswat

Examples

# Violin plots without grouping
cyt_violin(ExampleData1[, -c(1:3)], output_file = NULL, scale = "zscore")
# Violin plots grouped by Group with boxplot overlay
cyt_violin(ExampleData1[, -c(3,5:28)], group_by = "Group",
                        boxplot_overlay = TRUE, scale = "log2")

CytoProfile documentation built on Feb. 27, 2026, 5:06 p.m.