Bioconductor Spatial Data and Image Analysis Hackathon
We report the outcomes of the Bioconductor Spatial Data and Image Analysis Hackathon, held in Venice, Italy in April 2026.
Twenty-seven researchers and software developers organized into four teams to advance R/Bioconductor capabilities for
spatial omics and image analysis. Outputs include scalable raster–polygon workflows for whole-slide pathology, an R package
for running spatial foundation models via reticulate/basilisk, a spatially stratified differential expression framework, and
substantial enhancements to the R SpatialData infrastructure for interoperability with the Python spatialdata ecosystem.
All software is openly available and under active development.