Fig. 1

Overview of the benchmarking process and key aspects of evaluation. a Schematic of simAdaptor approach. It applies spatial simulated models directly without segmentation considerations. b Schematic of non-simAdaptor approach. Initially, spatial clustering of data identifies regions sharing similar expression profiles. Following this, spatial transcriptomics data is categorized, allowing the application of established simulation methods to each identified category. c Multi-tasks of evaluation were examined in this study, including data properties, spatial downstream analytical task, and scalability