An improved method for detecting and delineating genomic regions with altered gene expression in cancer

Abstract

Genomic regions with altered gene expression are a characteristic feature of cancer cells. We present a novel method for identifying such regions in gene expression maps. This method is based on total variation minimization, a classical signal restoration technique. In systematic evaluations, we show that our method combines top-notch detection performance with an ability to delineate relevant regions without excessive over-segmentation, making it a significant advance over existing methods. Software (Rendersome) is provided. © 2008 Nilsson et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.