Kernel Functions for Graph Classification

Graphs are information-rich structures, but their complexity makes them difficult to analyze. Given their broad and powerful representation capacity, the classification of graphs has become an intense area of research. Many established classifiers represent objects with vectors of explicit features. When the number of features grows, however, these vector representations suffer from typical problems of high dimensionality such as overfitting and high computation time. This work instead focuses on using kernel functions to map graphs into implicity defined spaces that avoid the difficulties of vector representations. The introduction of kernel classifiers has kindled great interest in kernel functions for graph data. By using kernels the problem of graph classification changes from finding a good classifier to finding a good kernel function. This work explores several novel uses of kernel functions for graph classification. The first technique is the use of structure based features to add structural information to the kernel function. A strength of this approach is the ability to identify specific structure features that contribute significantly to the classification process. Discriminative structures can then be passed off to domain-specific researchers for additional analysis. The next approach is the use of wavelet functions to represent graph topology as simple real-valued features. This approach achieves order-of-magnitude decreases in kernel computation time by eliminating costly topological comparisons, while retaining competitive classification accuracy. Finally, this work examines the use of even simpler graph representations and their utility for classification. The models produced from the kernel functions presented here yield excellent performance with respect to both efficiency and accuracy, as demonstrated in a variety of experimental studies

The MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC)-II study of common practices for the development and validation of microarray-based predictive models

Gene expression data from microarrays are being applied to predict preclinical and clinical endpoints, but the reliability of these predictions has not been established. In the MAQC-II project, 36 independent teams analyzed six microarray data sets to generate predictive models for classifying a sample with respect to one of 13 endpoints indicative of lung or liver toxicity in rodents, or of breast cancer, multiple myeloma or neuroblastoma in humans. In total, >30,000 models were built using many combinations of analytical methods. The teams generated predictive models without knowing the biological meaning of some of the endpoints and, to mimic clinical reality, tested the models on data that had not been used for training. We found that model performance depended largely on the endpoint and team proficiency and that different approaches generated models of similar performance. The conclusions and recommendations from MAQC-II should be useful for regulatory agencies, study committees and independent investigators that evaluate methods for global gene expression analysis. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.0SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe