FastQC aims to provide a simple way to do some quality control checks on raw sequence data coming from high throughput sequencing pipelines. It provides a modular set of analyses which you can use to give a quick impression of whether your data has any problems of which you should be aware before doing any further analysis.

The main functions of FastQC are:

• Import of data from BAM, SAM or FastQ files (any variant);

• Providing a quick overview to tell you in which areas there may be problems;

• Summary graphs and tables to quickly assess your data;

• Export of results to an HTML based permanent report;

• Offline operation to allow automated generation of reports without running the interactive application.

FastQC aims to provide a QC report which can spot problems which originate either in the sequencer or in the starting library material. It can either run as a stand alone interactive application for the immediate analysis of small numbers of FastQ files, or it can be run in a non-interactive mode where it would be suitable for integrating into a larger analysis pipeline for the systematic processing of large numbers of files.