Motivation: Next-generation sequencing technology is increasingly being used for clinical diagnostic tests. Unlike research cell lines, clinical samples are often genomically heterogeneous due to low sample purity or the presence of genetic subpopulations. Therefore, a variant calling algorithm for calling low-frequency polymorphisms in heterogeneous samples is needed. Result: We present a novel variant calling algorithm that uses a hierarchical Bayesian model to estimate allele frequency and call variants in heterogeneous samples. We show that our algorithm improves upon current classifiers and has higher sensitivity and specificity over a wide range of median read depth and minor allele frequency. We apply our model and identify twelve mutations in the PAXP1 gene in a matched clinical breast ductal carcinoma tumor sample; two of which are loss-of-heterozygosity events
