# Getting Started with RankMap

Jinming Cheng1

1Centre for Biomedical Data Science, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore 169857, Singapore

#### 18 May, 2026

# Contents

# 1 Introduction

RankMap is an R package for fast, robust, and scalable reference-based cell type annotation in single-cell and spatial transcriptomics data. It works by transforming gene expression matrices into sparse ranked representations and training a multinomial logistic regression model using the `glmnet` framework. This rank-based approach improves robustness to batch effects, platform differences, and partial gene coverage—especially beneficial for technologies such as Xenium and MERFISH.

RankMap supports commonly used data structures including `Seurat`, `SingleCellExperiment`, and `SpatialExperiment`. The workflow includes flexible preprocessing steps such as top-K gene masking, binning, expression weighting, and scaling, followed by efficient model training and rapid prediction.

Compared to existing tools such as SingleR, RCTD (via spacexr), and Azimuth, RankMap achieves comparable or superior accuracy with significantly faster runtime, making it particularly well suited for high-throughput applications on large datasets.

This vignette provides a quick-start guide to using RankMap for cell type prediction.

# 2 Installation

Install RankMap from Bioconductor

    if (!requireNamespace("BiocManager", quietly = TRUE)) {
        install.packages("BiocManager")
    }

    BiocManager::install("RankMap")

# 3 Quick Start (Seurat Objects)

## 3.1 Load Data

    library(RankMap)
    library(Seurat)
    #> Loading required package: SeuratObject
    #> Loading required package: sp
    #>
    #> Attaching package: 'SeuratObject'
    #> The following objects are masked from 'package:base':
    #>
    #>     intersect, t

Load example single-cell RNA-seq dataset (17,597 genes x 150 cells):

    seu_sc <- readRDS(system.file("extdata", "seu_sc.rds", package = "RankMap"))
    seu_sc
    #> An object of class Seurat
    #> 17597 features across 150 samples within 1 assay
    #> Active assay: RNA (17597 features, 0 variable features)
    #>  2 layers present: counts, data

Load example Xenium spatial transcriptomics dataset (313 genes x 150 cells):

    seu_xen <- readRDS(system.file("extdata", "seu_xen.rds", package = "RankMap"))
    seu_xen
    #> An object of class Seurat
    #> 313 features across 150 samples within 1 assay
    #> Active assay: RNA (313 features, 0 variable features)
    #>  2 layers present: counts, data

## 3.2 Predict Cell Types

Run cell type prediction using the `RankMap()` function. By default, RankMap uses normalized expression from the “data” slot. For spatial datasets with limited gene panels, a smaller `k` (e.g., `k = 20`) is typically sufficient. For single-cell RNA-seq with deeper coverage, larger values of `k` (e.g., 100 or 200) are generally recommended.

    pred_df <- RankMap(
        ref_data = seu_sc,
        ref_labels = seu_sc$cell_type,
        new_data = seu_xen,
        k = 20
    )

The result is a `data.frame` containing: `cell_id`, `predicted_cell_type` and `confidence`

    head(pred_df)
    #>   cell_id predicted_cell_type confidence
    #> 1    3869               Tumor     0.8829
    #> 2    5257               Tumor     0.9612
    #> 3    6456               Basal     0.9243
    #> 4    8555                  LP     0.8847
    #> 5    9243               Basal     0.9911
    #> 6   10303               Basal     0.9971

## 3.3 Evaluate Performance

If ground truth labels are available, you can evaluate prediction accuracy using:

    perf <- evaluatePredictionPerformance(
        prediction_df = pred_df,
        truth = seu_xen$cell_type_SingleR
    )
    perf
    #> $overall_accuracy
    #> [1] 0.9466667
    #>
    #> $per_class_accuracy
    #> Basal    LP Tumor
    #>  0.96  0.90  0.98
    #>
    #> $confusion_matrix
    #>        Predicted
    #> True    Basal LP Tumor
    #>   Basal    48  2     0
    #>   LP        4 45     1
    #>   Tumor     1  0    49

# 4 Quick Start (SummarizedExperiment Objects)

## 4.1 Prepare Data

Convert `Seurat` objects into `SingleCellExperiment` objects:

    library(SingleCellExperiment)
    #> Loading required package: SummarizedExperiment
    #> Loading required package: MatrixGenerics
    #> Loading required package: matrixStats
    #>
    #> Attaching package: 'MatrixGenerics'
    #> The following objects are masked from 'package:matrixStats':
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    #>     colAlls, colAnyNAs, colAnys, colAvgsPerRowSet, colCollapse,
    #>     colCounts, colCummaxs, colCummins, colCumprods, colCumsums,
    #>     colDiffs, colIQRDiffs, colIQRs, colLogSumExps, colMadDiffs,
    #>     colMads, colMaxs, colMeans2, colMedians, colMins, colOrderStats,
    #>     colProds, colQuantiles, colRanges, colRanks, colSdDiffs, colSds,
    #>     colSums2, colTabulates, colVarDiffs, colVars, colWeightedMads,
    #>     colWeightedMeans, colWeightedMedians, colWeightedSds,
    #>     colWeightedVars, rowAlls, rowAnyNAs, rowAnys, rowAvgsPerColSet,
    #>     rowCollapse, rowCounts, rowCummaxs, rowCummins, rowCumprods,
    #>     rowCumsums, rowDiffs, rowIQRDiffs, rowIQRs, rowLogSumExps,
    #>     rowMadDiffs, rowMads, rowMaxs, rowMeans2, rowMedians, rowMins,
    #>     rowOrderStats, rowProds, rowQuantiles, rowRanges, rowRanks,
    #>     rowSdDiffs, rowSds, rowSums2, rowTabulates, rowVarDiffs, rowVars,
    #>     rowWeightedMads, rowWeightedMeans, rowWeightedMedians,
    #>     rowWeightedSds, rowWeightedVars
    #> Loading required package: GenomicRanges
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    #>     mapply, match, mget, order, paste, pmax, pmax.int, pmin, pmin.int,
    #>     rank, rbind, rownames, sapply, saveRDS, table, tapply, unique,
    #>     unsplit, which.max, which.min
    #> Loading required package: S4Vectors
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    #> Loading required package: IRanges
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    #> Welcome to Bioconductor
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    #>     'browseVignettes()'. To cite Bioconductor, see
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    #>     Assays
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    #>
    #>     Assays

    sce_sc <- SingleCellExperiment(
        assays = list(
            counts = GetAssayData(seu_sc, layer = "counts"),
            logcounts = GetAssayData(seu_sc, layer = "data")
        ),
        colData = seu_sc[[]] # seu_sc@meta.data
    )

    sce_sp <- SingleCellExperiment(
        assays = list(
            counts = GetAssayData(seu_xen, layer = "counts"),
            logcounts = GetAssayData(seu_xen, layer = "data")
        ),
        colData = seu_xen[[]] # seu_xen@meta.data
    )

## 4.2 Predict Cell Types

Run cell type prediction using the `RankMap()` function. Set `k = 100` as a reasonable default when the optimal number of top-ranked genes is unknown. When using `SummarizedExperiment` input, the `logcounts` assay is used automatically.

    pred_df <- RankMap(
        ref_data = sce_sc,
        ref_labels = sce_sc$cell_type,
        new_data = sce_sp,
        k = 100
    )

## 4.3 Evaluate Performance

Compare predictions with ground truth labels:

    perf <- evaluatePredictionPerformance(
        prediction_df = pred_df,
        truth = sce_sp$cell_type_SingleR
    )
    perf
    #> $overall_accuracy
    #> [1] 0.98
    #>
    #> $per_class_accuracy
    #> Basal    LP Tumor
    #>  0.98  1.00  0.96
    #>
    #> $confusion_matrix
    #>        Predicted
    #> True    Basal LP Tumor
    #>   Basal    49  1     0
    #>   LP        0 50     0
    #>   Tumor     2  0    48

# 5 Session Info

    sessionInfo()
    #> R version 4.6.0 Patched (2026-05-01 r89994)
    #> Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin23
    #> Running under: macOS Tahoe 26.3.1
    #>
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    #> BLAS:   /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib
    #> LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.12.1
    #>
    #> locale:
    #> [1] C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
    #>
    #> time zone: America/New_York
    #> tzcode source: internal
    #>
    #> attached base packages:
    #> [1] stats4    stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods
    #> [8] base
    #>
    #> other attached packages:
    #>  [1] SingleCellExperiment_1.35.1 SummarizedExperiment_1.43.0
    #>  [3] Biobase_2.73.1              GenomicRanges_1.65.0
    #>  [5] Seqinfo_1.3.0               IRanges_2.47.1
    #>  [7] S4Vectors_0.51.2            BiocGenerics_0.59.2
    #>  [9] generics_0.1.4              MatrixGenerics_1.25.0
    #> [11] matrixStats_1.5.0           Seurat_5.5.0
    #> [13] SeuratObject_5.4.0          sp_2.2-1
    #> [15] RankMap_1.1.1               BiocStyle_2.41.0
    #>
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    #>   [1] RColorBrewer_1.1-3     jsonlite_2.0.0         shape_1.4.6.1
    #>   [4] magrittr_2.0.5         spatstat.utils_3.2-3   farver_2.1.2
    #>   [7] rmarkdown_2.31         vctrs_0.7.3            ROCR_1.0-12
    #>  [10] spatstat.explore_3.8-0 S4Arrays_1.13.0        htmltools_0.5.9
    #>  [13] SparseArray_1.13.2     sass_0.4.10            sctransform_0.4.3
    #>  [16] parallelly_1.47.0      KernSmooth_2.23-26     bslib_0.11.0
    #>  [19] htmlwidgets_1.6.4      ica_1.0-3              plyr_1.8.9
    #>  [22] plotly_4.12.0          zoo_1.8-15             cachem_1.1.0
    #>  [25] igraph_2.3.1           mime_0.13              lifecycle_1.0.5
    #>  [28] iterators_1.0.14       pkgconfig_2.0.3        Matrix_1.7-5
    #>  [31] R6_2.6.1               fastmap_1.2.0          fitdistrplus_1.2-6
    #>  [34] future_1.70.0          shiny_1.13.0           digest_0.6.39
    #>  [37] patchwork_1.3.2        tensor_1.5.1           RSpectra_0.16-2
    #>  [40] irlba_2.3.7            progressr_0.19.0       spatstat.sparse_3.1-0
    #>  [43] httr_1.4.8             polyclip_1.10-7        abind_1.4-8
    #>  [46] compiler_4.6.0         S7_0.2.2               fastDummies_1.7.6
    #>  [49] MASS_7.3-65            DelayedArray_0.39.2    tools_4.6.0
    #>  [52] lmtest_0.9-40          otel_0.2.0             httpuv_1.6.17
    #>  [55] future.apply_1.20.2    goftest_1.2-3          glue_1.8.1
    #>  [58] nlme_3.1-169           promises_1.5.0         grid_4.6.0
    #>  [61] Rtsne_0.17             cluster_2.1.8.2        reshape2_1.4.5
    #>  [64] gtable_0.3.6           spatstat.data_3.1-9    tidyr_1.3.2
    #>  [67] data.table_1.18.4      XVector_0.53.0         spatstat.geom_3.7-3
    #>  [70] RcppAnnoy_0.0.23       ggrepel_0.9.8          RANN_2.6.2
    #>  [73] foreach_1.5.2          pillar_1.11.1          stringr_1.6.0
    #>  [76] spam_2.11-3            RcppHNSW_0.6.0         later_1.4.8
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    #>  [82] survival_3.8-6         deldir_2.0-4           tidyselect_1.2.1
    #>  [85] miniUI_0.1.2           pbapply_1.7-4          knitr_1.51
    #>  [88] gridExtra_2.3          bookdown_0.46          scattermore_1.2
    #>  [91] xfun_0.57              stringi_1.8.7          lazyeval_0.2.3
    #>  [94] yaml_2.3.12            evaluate_1.0.5         codetools_0.2-20
    #>  [97] tibble_3.3.1           BiocManager_1.30.27    cli_3.6.6
    #> [100] uwot_0.2.4             xtable_1.8-8           reticulate_1.46.0
    #> [103] jquerylib_0.1.4        dichromat_2.0-0.1      Rcpp_1.1.1-1.1
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    #> [118] purrr_1.2.2            rlang_1.2.0            cowplot_1.2.0