# scDHA package manual

## Duc Tran

### 2026-08-27

# Introduction

Advances in microfluidics and sequencing technologies have allowed us to monitor biological systems at single-cell resolution. This comprehensive decomposition of complex tissues holds enormous potential in developmental biology and clinical research. However, the ever-increasing number of cells, technical noise, and high dropout rate pose significant computational challenges in scRNA-seq analysis.

To address this problem, we introduce single-cell Decomposition using Hierarchical Autoencoder (scDHA), which can efficiently detach noise from informative biological signals. The scDHA pipeline consists of two core modules. The first module is a non-negative kernel autoencoder that provides a non-negative, part-based representation of the data. Based on the weight distribution of the encoder, scDHA removes genes or components that have insignificant contributions to the representation. The second module is a Stacked Bayesian Self-learning Network that is built upon the Variational Autoencoder to project the data onto a low dimensional space. Using this informative and compact representation, many analyses can be performed with high accuracy and tractable time complexity (mostly linear or lower complexity).

In one joint framework, the scDHA software package conducts cell segregation through unsupervised learning, dimension reduction and visualization, cell classification, and time-trajectory inference.

# Installation

### Install scDHA package and other requirements

scDHA can be installed fron GitHub or CRAN using below instruction. scDHA depends on the `torch` package to build and train the autoencoders. When scDHA package is loaded, it will check for the availability of `C++ libtorch`. `torch` package can be used to install `C++ libtorch`, which is necessary for neural network computation.

    #Install devtools:
    utils::install.packages('devtools')

    #Install the package from GitHub:
    devtools::install_github('duct317/scDHA')
    #With manual and vignette:
    devtools::install_github('duct317/scDHA', build_manual = T, build_vignettes = T)
    #Or from CRAN:
    install.packages("scDHA")

    #When the package is loaded, it will check for C++ libtorch
    library(scDHA)
    #libtorch can be installed using:
    torch::install_torch()

### Install other necessary packages

    if (!requireNamespace("mclust", quietly = TRUE)) install.packages("mclust")

# Analysis on Goolam dataset

    library(scDHA)
    #Load example data (Goolam dataset)
    data("Goolam")

    #Get data matrix and label
    data <- t(Goolam$data); label <- as.character(Goolam$label)

    #Log transform the data
    data <- log2(data + 1)

### Clustering

    #Generate clustering result, the input matrix has rows as samples and columns as genes
    result <- scDHA(data, seed = 1)

    #The clustering result can be found here
    cluster <- result$cluster

    #Calculate adjusted Rand Index using mclust package
    ari <- round(mclust::adjustedRandIndex(cluster,label), 2)
    print(paste0("ARI = ", ari))

### Visualization

    #Generate 2D representation, the input is the output from scDHA function
    result <- scDHA.vis(result, seed = 1)

    #Plot the representation of the dataset, different colors represent different cell types
    plot(result$pred, col=factor(label), xlab = "scDHA1", ylab = "scDHA2")

### Time trajectory inference

    #Cell stage order in Goolam dataset
    cell.stages <- c("2cell", "4cell", "8cell", "16cell", "blast")

    #Generate pseudo-time for each cell, the input is the output from scDHA function
    result <- scDHA.pt(result, start.point = 1, seed = 1)

    #Calculate R-squared value representing correlation between inferred pseudo-time and cell stage order
    r2 <- round(cor(result$pt, as.numeric(factor(label, levels = cell.stages)))^2, digits = 2)

    #Plot pseudo-temporal ordering of cells in Goolam dataset
    plot(result$pt, factor(label, levels = cell.stages), xlab= "Pseudo Time", ylab = "Cell Stages", xaxt="n", yaxt="n")
    axis(2, at=1:5,labels=cell.stages, las=2)
    text(x = 1, y = 4.5, labels = paste0("R2 = ", r2))

### Cell classification

    #Split data into training and testing sets
    set.seed(1)
    idx <- sample.int(nrow(data), size = round(nrow(data)*0.75))

    train.x <- data[idx, ]; train.y <- label[idx]
    test.x <- data[-idx, ]; test.y <- label[-idx]

    #Predict the labels of cells in testing set, the input matrices have rows as samples and columns as genes
    prediction <- scDHA.class(train = train.x, train.label = train.y, test = test.x, seed = 1)

    #Calculate accuracy of the predictions
    acc <- round(sum(test.y == prediction)/length(test.y), 2)
    print(paste0("Accuracy = ", acc))