AN ANALYSER AND METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF FRACTIONS OF BIOLOGICAL MIXTURES

摘要

An analyser and method for determining the relative importance of fractions of biological mixtures projects data obtained from at least two mixtures with different physiological conditions by chromatographic or mass spectrometric measurement into a second attribute space using a projection technique such as principal component analysis. The projected data is then filtered using a feature selection method such as ReliefF, before being projected back to the first attribute space using a reversion of the projection technique. This back-projected data is then filtered using another feature selection method such as ReliefF before being output in a human-readable form. This technique improves the clarity of the data by removing components relating to noise or systematic error and therefore makes it easier to determine which fractions of biological mixtures are most important for distinguishing between the different biological mixtures and identifying the physiochemical attributes that correspond to the difference in physiological conditions. The technique is useful in medical diagnostics, quality control and basic biomedical science.