title: BiTrinA--multiscale binarization and trinarization with quality analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  When processing gene expression profiles or other biological data, it is often required to assign measurements to distinct categories (e.g. 'high' and 'low' and possibly 'intermediate'). Subsequent analyses strongly depend on the results of this quantization. Poor quantization will have potentially misleading effects on further investigations. We propose the BiTrinA package that integrates different multiscale algorithms for binarization and for trinarization of one-dimensional data with methods for quality assessment and visualization of the results. By identifying measurements that show large variations over different time points or conditions, this quality assessment can determine candidates that are related to the specific experimental setting.
  
  
  METHODS
  BiTrinA is freely available on CRAN.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  hans.kestler@leibniz-fli.de or hans.kestler@uni-ulm.de
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: Medical Systems Biology, Ulm University, 89069 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Müssel
authors.affiliation: Medical Systems Biology, Ulm University, 89069 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schmid
authors.affiliation: Medical Systems Biology, Ulm University, 89069 Ulm, Germany, Section of Oncology, Internal Medicine III, Ulm University, 89069 Ulm, Germany and.
authors.forename: Tamara J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Blätte
authors.affiliation: Medical Systems Biology, Ulm University, 89069 Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hopfensitz
authors.affiliation: Leibniz Institute on Aging-Fritz Lipmann Institute, 07745 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Ludwig
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lausser
authors.affiliation: Medical Systems Biology, Ulm University, 89069 Ulm, Germany, Leibniz Institute on Aging-Fritz Lipmann Institute, 07745 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Hans A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Kestler
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers