buscar
buscar is a Python package for reproducible hit calling in high-content screening. Rather than averaging cells into population-level summaries, it operates on individual cell distributions to preserve biological heterogeneity and identify perturbations with on-target morphological signatures.
Key capabilities:
- Define on-target and off-target morphology signatures from reference profiles
- Score perturbation efficacy via Earth Mover’s Distance
- Assess specificity with off-target scoring to reduce false positives
- Preserve single-cell heterogeneity throughout hit calling
- Integrates directly with pycytominer, coSMicQC, and CytoTable workflows