  Background: High-throughput proteomics techniques, such as mass spectrometry
(MS)-based approaches, produce very high-dimensional data-sets. In a clinical
setting one is often interested in how mass spectra differ between patients of
different classes, for example spectra from healthy patients vs. spectra from
patients having a particular disease. Machine learning algorithms are needed to
(a) identify these discriminating features and (b) classify unknown spectra
based on this feature set. Since the acquired data is usually noisy, the
algorithms should be robust against noise and outliers, while the identified
feature set should be as small as possible.
  Results: We present a new algorithm, Sparse Proteomics Analysis (SPA), based
on the theory of compressed sensing that allows us to identify a minimal
discriminating set of features from mass spectrometry data-sets. We show (1)
how our method performs on artificial and real-world data-sets, (2) that its
performance is competitive with standard (and widely used) algorithms for
analyzing proteomics data, and (3) that it is robust against random and
systematic noise. We further demonstrate the applicability of our algorithm to
two previously published clinical data-sets.
