Method to evaluate the quality of database search results and the performance of database search algorithms

摘要

A method for evaluating the performance of biopolymer identification algorithms, the method comprising a) generating noise and signal distributions, wherein the noise distribution comprises identification results obtained from the search of a database for arbitrarily generated sets of database mass data and wherein the signal distribution comprises identification results obtained from the search of a database for arbitrarily generated sets of database mass data which comprises mass data of a particular biopolymer of the database designated as a signal biopolymer; and b) calculating a performance index from the distributions which evaluates the performance of the algorithm.