Change Detection and Application to CGH Arrays

Copy number changes, also called chromosome gains or losses in the DNA content, have drawn recent attention in advancement of cancer research. Array CGH (Comparative Genomic Hybridization) is a molecular-cytogenetic method for genomewide screening for such loss and gain regions referring to genetic alterations. In this article, we present a simple but very effective method to uncover the locations of copy number changes through the use of modified maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) devised with some threshold approach. Implementations to simulated data having autocorrelation structure as well as to real CGH array confirm the excellent performance of this procedure.