title: Application of reliability coefficients in cDNA microarray data analysis.
abstract: Gene expression microarray technology has been widely used in areas such as human cancer research to identify molecular characteristics of sample specimens. The microarray study, however, is a very complicated procedure which involves numerous sources of variability that may be either systematic or random. Systematic variation is often eliminated by applying normalization procedures, but at present there are no standard criteria available to evaluate the performance of a particular normalization approach. In this paper, we propose a reliability-type coefficient as a criterion to assess the effectiveness of normalization procedures in eliminating systematic variation. Simulation studies show that this criterion performs reasonably well in a range of settings. The proposed method is illustrated using a subset of an ongoing microarray study of soft-tissue sarcoma.
authors.affiliation: Prosserman Center for Health Research, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 1X5. whe@stats.uwo.ca
authors.forename: Wenqing
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Shelley B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Bull
authors.forename: Nalan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gokgoz
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Andrulis
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wunder
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012509:Sarcoma / Q000235:genetics; D012983:Soft Tissue Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics