Avoiding Pitfalls in the Statistical Analysis of Heterogeneous Tumors

Information about tumors is usually obtained from a single assessment of a tumor sample, performed at some point in the course of the development and progression of the tumor, with patient characteristics being surrogates for natural history context. Differences between cells within individual tumor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Biomedical informatics insights Vol. 2; pp. 11 - 18
Main Authors:	Axelrod, David E, Miller, Naomi, Chapman, Judith-Anne W
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States Sage Publications Ltd 01-01-2009 Libertas Academica
Subjects:	Heterogeneity Patients Progressions Review Samples Sampling Statistical analysis Statistical methods Tumors
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Information about tumors is usually obtained from a single assessment of a tumor sample, performed at some point in the course of the development and progression of the tumor, with patient characteristics being surrogates for natural history context. Differences between cells within individual tumors (intratumor heterogeneity) and between tumors of different patients (intertumor heterogeneity) may mean that a small sample is not representative of the tumor as a whole, particularly for solid tumors which are the focus of this paper. This issue is of increasing importance as high-throughput technologies generate large multi-feature data sets in the areas of genomics, proteomics, and image analysis. Three potential pitfalls in statistical analysis are discussed (sampling, cut-points, and validation) and suggestions are made about how to avoid these pitfalls.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:	1178-2226 1178-2226