title: A new rule-based algorithm for identifying metabolic markers in prostate cancer using tandem mass spectrometry.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Prostate cancer is the most prevalent tumor in males and its incidence is expected to increase as the population ages. Prostate cancer is treatable by excision if detected at an early enough stage. The challenges of early diagnosis require the discovery of novel biomarkers and tools for prostate cancer management.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We developed a novel feature selection algorithm termed as associative voting (AV) for identifying biomarker candidates in prostate cancer data measured via targeted metabolite profiling MS/MS analysis. We benchmarked our algorithm against two standard entropy-based and correlation-based feature selection methods [Information Gain (IG) and ReliefF (RF)] and observed that, on a variety of classification tasks in prostate cancer diagnosis, our algorithm identified subsets of biomarker candidates that are both smaller and show higher discriminatory power than the subsets identified by IG and RF. A literature study confirms that the highest ranked biomarker candidates identified by AV have independently been identified as important factors in prostate cancer development.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The algorithm can be downloaded from the following http://biomed.umit.at/page.cfm?pageid=516.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall in Tyrol, Austria. melanie.osl@umit.at
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Osl
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dreiseitl
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pfeifer
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Weinberger
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Klocker
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bartsch
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schäfer
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tilg
authors.forename: Armin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Graber
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Baumgartner
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor