title: Background adjustment of cDNA microarray images by Maximum Entropy distributions.
abstract: Many empirical studies have demonstrated the exquisite sensitivity of both traditional and novel statistical and machine intelligence algorithms to the method of background adjustment used to analyze microarray datasets. In this paper we develop a statistical framework that approaches background adjustment as a classic stochastic inverse problem, whose noise characteristics are given in terms of Maximum Entropy distributions. We derive analytic closed form approximations to the combined problem of estimating the magnitude of the background in microarray images and adjusting for its presence. The proposed method reduces standardized measures of log expression variability across replicates in situations of known differential and non-differential gene expression without increasing the bias. Additionally, it results in computationally efficient procedures for estimation and learning based on sufficient statistics and can filter out spot measures with intensities that are numerically close to the background level resulting in a noise reduction of about 7%.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, University of Patras, GR-26504 Rion, Greece.
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Argyropoulos
authors.forename: Antonis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Daskalakis
authors.forename: George C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Nikiforidis
authors.forename: George C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Sakellaropoulos
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019277:Entropy; D015870:Gene Expression; D015233:Models, Statistical; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*