Smoothing waves in array CGH tumor profiles.

Abstract

Many high-resolution array comparative genomic hybridization tumor profiles contain a wave bias, which makes accurate detection of breakpoints in such profiles more difficult. An efficient and highly effective algorithm that largely removes the wave bias from tumor profiles by regressing the tumor profile data on data of profiles from the clinical genetics practice. Results are illustrated on two independent datasets. The algorithm is shown to be robust against the presence of true copy number aberrations. Moreover, the smoothed profiles are able to recapitulate the aberration location and signal for simulated tumor profiles. Easy-to-use R scripts, user instructions and data are available from http://www.few.vu.nl/~mavdwiel/nowaves.html. Supplementary information are available at Bioinformatics online.