title: Iterative ensemble feature selection for multiclass classification of imbalanced microarray data.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Microarray technology allows biologists to monitor expression levels of thousands of genes among various tumor tissues. Identifying relevant genes for sample classification of various tumor types is beneficial to clinical studies. One of the most widely used classification strategies for multiclass classification data is the One-Versus-All (OVA) schema that divides the original problem into multiple binary classification of one class against the rest. Nevertheless, multiclass microarray data tend to suffer from imbalanced class distribution between majority and minority classes, which inevitably deteriorates the performance of the OVA classification.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In this study, we propose a novel iterative ensemble feature selection (IEFS) framework for multiclass classification of imbalanced microarray data. In particular, filter feature selection and balanced sampling are performed iteratively and alternatively to boost the performance of each binary classification in the OVA schema. The proposed framework is tested and compared with other representative state-of-the-art filter feature selection methods using six benchmark multiclass microarray data sets. The experimental results show that IEFS framework provides superior or comparable performance to the other methods in terms of both classification accuracy and area under receiver operating characteristic curve. The more number of classes the data have, the better performance of IEFS framework achieves.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Balanced sampling and feature selection together work well in improving the performance of multiclass classification of imbalanced microarray data. The IEFS framework is readily applicable to other biological data analysis tasks facing the same problem.
authors.affiliation: College of Engineering and Information, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Junshan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jiarui
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Zexuan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: College of Engineering and Information, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiaoliang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: College of Engineering and Information, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ji