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What is External Data?

External Data: any dataset or multi-sample session loaded directly via user-provided URLs rather than from pre-indexed public catalogs (like CartoStore).

What loading modalities does CartoScope support for external data?

  • Single-Sample Catalog (catalog.yaml): Load individual slides directly via a catalog.yaml URL, an S3 folder (s3://bucket/dataset/), or a Zenodo record URL.
  • Multi-Sample Catalog (multi-catalog.yaml): Load multi-sample cohort studies via a master index (multi-catalog.yaml) referencing multiple sample catalogs and shared spatial factor models.
  • Batch External URLs: Pass a list of dataset/PMTILES URLs to dynamically build an ad-hoc multi-sample grid view session.

What storage systems does CartoScope support for external data?

External data can be hosted on a variety of secure or public storage systems that support HTTP range requests:

  • Object Storage: AWS S3 buckets or compatible object stores (s3:// or https://...s3.amazonaws.com/...).
  • Data Repositories: Zenodo records (https://zenodo.org/records/<record_id>) or other academic repositories.
  • Web Servers: Any HTTPS-accessible web server serving static .parquet, .pmtiles, and .yaml files.

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