title: CausalTrail: Testing hypothesis using causal Bayesian networks.
abstract: Summary Causal Bayesian Networks are a special class of Bayesian networks in which the hierarchy directly encodes the causal relationships between the variables. This allows to compute the effect of interventions, which are external changes to the system, caused by e.g. gene knockouts or an administered drug. Whereas numerous packages for constructing causal Bayesian networks are available, hardly any program targeted at downstream analysis exists. In this paper we present CausalTrail, a tool for performing reasoning on causal Bayesian networks using the do-calculus. CausalTrail's features include multiple data import methods, a flexible query language for formulating hypotheses, as well as an intuitive graphical user interface. The program is able to account for missing data and thus can be readily applied in multi-omics settings where it is common that not all measurements are performed for all samples. Availability and Implementation CausalTrail is implemented in C++ using the Boost and Qt5 libraries. It can be obtained from https://github.com/dstoeckel/causaltrail.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Stöckel
authors.affiliation: Centre for Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany.|Cluster of Excellence 'Multimodal Computing and Interaction', Computer Science, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: Centre for Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Trampert
authors.affiliation: Centre for Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany.
authors.forename: Hans-Peter
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Lenhof
keywords: Bayesian networks; GUI; causality; counterfactuals; do-calculus; expectation-maximisation; interventions; software