TileScope quantifies spatial gene expression relationships beyond colocalization

TileScope separates spatial gene-expression arrangements in glioblastoma and hepatocellular carcinoma constructions, using combined metrics to resolve coincident patches, gradients, and boundary-localized expression that single statistics miss.

• Why it matters: Spatial co-expression and enrichment can look similar while differing in how patterns are organized inside regions versus at boundaries, leaving ambiguous interpretations from colocalization-like measures.
• What they did: TileScope integrates regional enrichment, within-region correlation, cross-correlation over distance, and boundary expression differences, then uses repeated spatial partitions with consensus aggregation across 30 controlled constructions and 30 human glioblastoma sections.
• The result: In 30 glioblastoma sections, it distinguishes shared regional enrichment from internal covariation and detects hypoxia-associated expression localized at region boundaries despite negligible within-region correlation, and it reveals opposite within-periphery correlations for proliferation and myeloid programs in GL261 MCT1-KO versus controls.

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