Verification of Improving a Clustering Algorithm for Microarray Data with Missing Values

Gene expression microarray data often include multiple missing values. Most gene expression analysis (including gene clustering analysis); however, require a complete data matric as an input. In ordinary clustering methods, just a single missing value makes one abandon the whole data of a gene even if the rest of data for that gene was intact. The quality of analysis may decrease seriously as the missing rate is increased. In the opposite aspect, the imputation of missing value may result in an artifact that reduces the reliability of the analysis. To clarify this contradiction in microarray clustering analysis, this paper compared the accuracy of clustering with and without imputation over several microarray data having different missing rates. This paper also tested the clustering efficiency of several imputation methods including our proposed algorithm. The results showed it is worthwhile to check the clustering result in this alternative way without any imputed data for the imperfect microarray data.