Cancer Profiles by Affinity Propagation

The affinity propagation algorithm is applied to a problem of breast cancer subtyping using traditional biologic markers. The algorithm provides a procedure to determine the number of profiles to be considered. A well know breast cancer case series was used to compare the results of the affinity propagation with the results obtained with standard algorithms and indexes for the optimal choice of the number of clusters. Results from affinity propagation are consistent with the results already obtained having the advantage of providing an indication about the number of clusters.