Abstract
Affymetrix GeneChip expression array technology has become a standard tool in medical science and basic biology research. In this system, preprocessing occurs before one obtains expression level measurements. Because the number of competing preprocessing methods was large and growing, in the summer of 2003 we developed a benchmark to help users of the technology identify the best method for their application. In conjunction with the release of a Bioconductor R package (affycomp), a webtool was made available for developers of preprocessing methods to submit them to a benchmark for comparison. There have now been over 30 methods compared via the webtool. Results: Background correction, one of the main steps in preprocessing, has the largest effect on performance. In particular, background correction appears to improve accuracy but, in general, worsen precision. The benchmark results put this balance in perspective. Furthermore, we have improved some of the original benchmark metrics to provide more detailed information regarding accuracy and precision. A handful of methods stand out as maintaining a useful balance.
The affycomp package, now version 1.5.2, continues to be available as part of the Bioconductor project (http://www.bioconductor.org). The webtool continues to be available at http://affycomp.biostat.jhsph.edu.
Disciplines
Microarrays
Suggested Citation
Irizarry, Rafael A.; Wu, Zhijin; and Jaffee, Harris A., "Comparison of Affymetrix GeneChip Expression Measures" (September 2005). Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers. Working Paper 86.
https://biostats.bepress.com/jhubiostat/paper86
Comments
Bioinformatics, Vol.1, no. 1, 2005, pp.1-7.