Abstract:
A method for diagnosing depression includes providing surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometric (SELDI-MS) data of a plurality of proteins, said data obtained from a patient and comprising a plurality of peak values, and analyzing said peak values with an alternating decision tree comprising a set of tests of said data peaks values and associated prediction values, wherein said data is predictive of depression if a sum of the prediction values of said tree is greater than 1.0.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED UNITED STATES APPLICATIONS 
     This application claims priority from “Molecular Diagnosis in Depression and Treatment based on Boosting Classification”, U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/644,141 of Wang, et al., filed Jan. 14, 2005, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. 
    
    
     TECHNICAL FIELD 
     This invention is directed to the automatic diagnosis of depression based on boosting classification of proteomic data. 
     DISCUSSION OF THE RELATED ART 
     Depression is one of the most common psychological problems in the states. Each year over 17,000,000 American adults experience a period of clinical depression. The cost in human suffering cannot be estimated. Depression can interfere with normal functioning, and frequently causes problems with work, social and family adjustment. Many people experiencing depression are misdiagnosed with physical illnesses instead. This is unfortunate because, with proper treatment, nearly 80% of those with depression can make significant improvement in their mood and life adjustment. 
     Currently, mental health professionals and physicians, who carefully deliberate through a medical evaluation, a clinical interview, and possibly additional assessments, evaluate the diagnosis of clinical depression. In addition, a professional will typically evaluate whether a person has specific symptoms of a mood disorder. 
     As the human genome project is being finished, there is increasing need for bioinformatics to utilize the enormous amount of genomic information to devise computational procedures to solve the biomedical and clinical problems. In addition, modern biotechnology provides diverse means of high-throughout technology, such as microarray, SAGE and proteomics, for a bioinformatician to investigate the complex nature of human diseases. 
     Protein profiling in tissues and fluids in disease and pathological controls is frequently used for molecular-based diagnosis. Proteomic technologies will play an increasingly important role in molecular diagnosis, drug discovery and the practice of medicine in the post-genomic era, the first decade of the 21 st  century. Proteomics is providing a better understanding of pathomechanisms of human diseases. Analysis of different levels of gene expression in healthy and diseased tissues by proteomic approaches is as important as the detection of mutations and polymorphisms at the genomic level and may be of more value in designing a rational therapy. Protein profiling in body tissues and fluids, in health as well as in disease, is the basis of the use of proteomic technologies for molecular diagnostics. 
     In order to enhance understanding of the physiology and molecular basis of depression and proper treatment and medication, protein profiling and statistical learning process are useful for molecular diagnosis. Proteomics will play an important role in personalized medicine of the near future. One such proteomics-based assessment method involves the use of a surface enhanced laser desorption ionization mass spectrometer (SELDI MS) and automatic diagnostic tool. Proteomics will play an important role in medicine of the future, which will be personalized and will combine diagnostics with therapeutics. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     Exemplary embodiments of the invention as described herein generally include methods and systems for a boosting-based diagnosis method, on SELDI mass spectrometer data of depression patients and neurological controls. A molecular diagnosis methodology according to an embodiment of the invention uses boosting classification with IMAC SELDI protein profiling to provide an effective means to distinguish depression patients from the controls, which is confirmed by 10-fold cross validation and ROC analysis. The resulting decision rules are often simple and easy to interpret. These rules can be expressed in a simple and straightforward alternating decision tree format or in a conditional decision rule format. The decision rules identify the most discriminate features in SELDI MS data, which can be exploited as biomarkers for diagnosis. 
     A boosting based method according to an embodiment of the invention provides an efficient and objective method for physicians and psychologists to make a diagnosis for patients, especially those who could be misdiagnosed with other diseases. These methods provide an efficient technique for database-guided diagnosis of depression and other neurological diseases. 
     According to an aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for diagnosing depression including providing surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionisation mass spectrometric (SELDI-MS) data of a plurality of proteins, said data obtained from a patient and comprising a plurality of peak values, and analysing said peak values with an alternating decision tree comprising a set of tests of said data peaks values and associated prediction values, wherein said data is predictive of depression if a sum of the prediction values of said tree is greater than 1.0. 
     According to a further aspect of the invention, the SELDI-MS peak values are identified from a univariant analysis of SELDI-MS data obtained from a plurality of patients, including patients diagnosed with depression and control patients. 
     According to a further aspect of the invention, the univariant analysis comprises performing a standard t-test. 
     According to a further aspect of the invention, the alternating decision tree is trained by applying a boosting algorithm to the SELDI-MS peak values identified from said plurality of patients. 
     According to a further aspect of the invention, the boosting algorithm includes providing a set of training examples (x 1 , y 1 ), . . . , (x m , y m ) where where x i  ε R d  and y i  ε{−1,+1}, providing set of base conditions, initialising a set of preconditions to TRUE, initialising a set of weights for said training examples to a same initial value, initialising said alternating decision tree to a single rule with a precondition and base condition both set to TRUE, adding a new rule to said alternating decision tree, wherein said new rule comprises a base condition and a precondition that minimize a prediction function, updating said prediction set with a conjunction of said base condition and a negation of said base condition, and updating the set of weights based on prediction values of said new rule. 
     According to a further aspect of the invention, the prediction function Z t (c 1 , c 2 ), wherein c 1  represents a precondition and c 2  represents a base condition, is defined by
 
 Z   t ( c   1   ,c   2 )=2(√{square root over ( W   + ( c   1               c   2 ) W   − ( c   1             c   2 ))}{square root over ( W   + ( c   1             c   2 ) W   − ( c   1             c   2 ))}+√{square root over ( W   + ( c   1             −c   2 ) W   − ( c   1             −c   2 ))}{square root over ( W   + ( c   1             −c   2 ) W   − ( c   1             −c   2 ))})+ W (− c   2 ),
 
wherein W + (c), W − (c) denote the total weight of training set examples that satisfy c.

     According to a further aspect of the invention, the prediction values of said new rule are 
               1   2     ⁢     ln   ⁡     (         W   +     ⁡     (       c   1     ⋀     c   2       )           W   -     ⁡     (       c   1     ⋀     c   2       )         )             
and
 
                 1   2     ⁢     ln   ⁡     (         W   +     ⁡     (       c   1     ⋀     ⫬     c   2         )           W   1     ⁡     (       c   1     ⋀     ⫬     c   2         )         )         ,         
wherein c 1  represents a precondition and c 2  represents a base condition, and wherein W + (c), W − (c) denote the total weight of training set examples that satisfy c.
 
     According to a further aspect of the invention, updating the set of weights comprises multiplying each said weight by exp(−y i r(x i )), wherein r(x i ) represents a value associated with training example x i  by the new rule r, and, and y i  ε{−1,+1}. 
     According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the computer to perform the method steps for diagnosing depression. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  presents pseudocode of an exemplary AdaBoost algorithm, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIGS. 2(   a )-( c ) depict several tree-based classifiers, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 3  presents pseudocode of an exemplary boosting alternating decision tree algorithm, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 4  is a table of results of a univariant analysis of IMAC SELDI 24 peaks between the 23 patients and 16 neurological controls, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIGS. 5(   a )-( b ) depict exemplary classifiers that resulted from analysing the IMAC SELDI data in an alternating-tree format from 7 round AdaBoost training and the corresponding rules, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 6  is a table of 10-fold cross validation results of a Boosting-based diagnosis, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 7  depicts a graph of an ROC curve calculated an AdaBoost prediction of depression vs. control, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 8  is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system for implementing a boosting-based method for diagnosing depression, according to an embodiment of the invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     Exemplary embodiments of the invention as described herein generally include systems and methods for a molecular diagnosis methodology that provides an efficient means for distinguishing depression from neurological controls. The decision rules are simple and easy to interpret, and can be expressed in a straightforward alternating decision tree format. The rules identify the most discriminate features in SELDI MS data, which can be utilized as biomarkers for diagnosis. A diagnostic method according to an embodiment of the invention is based on AdaBoost and its derivatives, some of the best classification methods known in for learning. The method described according to an embodiment of the invention includes two parts: (1) a general mechanism of AdaBoost, and (2) a Boosting-based alternating decision tree (ADTboost). The ADTboost was carried out on a training dataset, which is composed of depression patients and control data from SELDI MS experiments. 
     Boosting is a general method for improving the accuracy of any given learning algorithm. AdaBoost solved many practical difficulties of earlier boosting methods. AdaBoost is a boosting algorithm in that it can .efficiently convert a weak learning algorithm, which can always generate a hypothesis with a weak edge for any distribution, into a strong learning algorithm, which can generate a hypothesis with an arbitrarily low error rate, given sufficient data. After each base learning iteration, misclassified training samples are adaptively given high weights in the next iteration. This forces the next base learner to focus on the misclassified training data. According to an embodiment of the invention, AdaBoost is utilized to learn decision rules comprising an alternating decision tree. This combinatory algorithm generates classification rules that provide most discriminatory features, such as peaks in mass spectrometry data, which can be utilized as biomarkers for diagnostic purposes. AdaBoost can also provide a measure of prediction confidence. 
     Pseudocode for AdaBoost is presented in  FIG. 1 . Referring to the figure, the algorithm at step 1.1 takes as input a training set (x 1 , y 1 ), . . . , (x m , y m ) where each x i  belongs to some domain or instance space, and each label y i  is in some label set Y. For expository purposes, it can without limitation be assumed that Y={−1, +1} although extensions to the multiclass case will also be disclosed. A main idea of the algorithm is to maintain a distribution or set of weights over the training set. The weight of this distribution on training example i on round t is denoted W t (i). Initially, at step 1.2, all weights are set equally. AdaBoost then calls a given weak or base learning algorithm repeatedly in a series of rounds t=1, . . . , T at steps 1.3 and 1.4. On each round, the weights of incorrectly classified examples are increased so that the weak learner is forced to focus on the hard examples in the training set. At last, all the weak hypothesises are combined into a single strong hypothesis using a weighted majority vote schema. 
     The weak learner&#39;s job is to find, at step 1.5, a weak hypothesis h t : X→{−1,+1} appropriate for the distribution W t . At step 1.6, the goodness of a weak hypothesis is measured by its error ε t : 
               ɛ   i     =         Pr     i   -     D   t         ⁡     [         h   t     ⁡     (     x   i     )       ≠     y   i       ]       =       ∑     i   :         h   t     ⁡     (     x   i     )       ≠     y   i           ⁢         W   t     ⁡     (   i   )       .               
Notice that the error is measured with respect to the distribution W t  on which the weak learner was trained. In practice, the weak learner can be any algorithm that can use the weights W t  on the training examples. Alternatively, when this is not possible, a subset of the training examples can be sampled according to W t , and these (unweighted) resampled examples can be used to train the weak learner.
 
     Once the weak hypothesis h t  has been received, AdaBoost chooses, at step 1.7, a parameter α t  that measures the importance that is assigned to h t . Note that α t ≧0 if ε t ≦½, (which we can assume without loss of generality), and that α t  gets larger as ε t  gets smaller. 
     The distribution W t  is next updated at step 1.8 using the rule shown in the figure. The effect of this rule is to increase the weight of examples misclassified by h t , and to decrease the weight of correctly classified examples. Thus, the weight tends to concentrate on “hard” examples. The final hypothesis H, which is output at step 1.9, is a weighted majority vote of the T weak hypotheses where α t  is the weight assigned to h t . 
     AdaBoost and its analysis can be extended to handle weak hypotheses which output real-valued or confidence-rated predictions. That is, for each instance x, the weak hypothesis h t  outputs a prediction h t (x)ε            whose sign is the predicted label (−1 or +1) and whose magnitude |h t (x)| gives a measure of “confidence” in the prediction. For expository purposes, however, exemplary, non-limiting embodiments of the invention focus on the case of binary ({−1,+1}) valued weak-hypothesis predictions. Many real-world learning problems, however, are multiclass with more than two possible classes, and there are several methods known in the art of extending AdaBoost to the multiclass case.
     An important property of AdaBoost concerns its ability to reduce the training error. AdaBoost is also adaptive in that it adapts to the error rates of the individual weak hypotheses. This is the basis of its name: “Ada” is short for “adaptive.” 
     Boosting decision tree learning algorithms can yield excellent classifiers. A simple decision tree is depicted in  FIG. 2(   a ). This decision tree has two decision nodes and three prediction leaves. The tree defines a binary classification rule which maps instances of the form (a,b)εR 2  into one of two classes denoted by −1 and +1.  FIG. 2(   b ) illustrates a different representation of the same classification rule. In this representation each decision node is replaced by two nodes: (1) a prediction node, represented by an ellipse; and (2) a splitter node represented by a rectangle. The decision node is identical to that of  FIG. 2(   a ), while the prediction node is now associated with a real valued number. Thus, an instance is mapped into a path along the tree from the root to one of the leaves. However, the classification that is associated with the path is not the label of the leaf, but rather the sign of the sum of the predictions along the path. For example, the classification of the instance a=b=0.5 is sign(0.5−0.7−0.2)=sign(−0.4)=−1. It is easy to check that the two trees define the same classification rule. It is also clear that many different trees of the second type can represent the same tree of the first type. The second representation is referred to as an “alternating tree” representation for the reason that it comprises alternating layers of prediction nodes and splitter nodes. 
     Alternating trees can be represented as a vote over simple prediction rules as follows. The tree in  FIG. 2(   b ) can be considered as including a root prediction node and two units of three nodes each: a decision node, and the two prediction nodes that are its children. The classification rule described in  FIG. 2(   b ) can now be rewritten as a weighted majority vote, by associating with each of the decision nodes a simple rule of the following form: 
                                             if(precondition) then             if(condition) then output p1             else output p2           else output 0                        
Specifically, the following two rules can be associated with the decision nodes in  FIG. 2(   b ):
 
                                                 r1(a,b)=   r2(a,b)=           if(always) then   if(a&lt;4.5) then             if(a&lt;4.5) then     if(b&gt;1) then               output −0.7       output +0.4             else output +0.2     else output −0.2           else output 0   else output 0                        
By combining these two rules with the constant prediction associated with the root node one can rewrite the classication rule represented by the decision tree as: sign (0.5+r1(a,b)+r2(a,b) ). These rules are referred to as base rules.
 
     This transformation enables one to represent any standard decision tree as a sum of base rules each of which corresponds to one of the decision nodes in the tree. In general, precondition is the conjunction of conditions that lead to a given decision node, condition is the decision associated with the node, and p1, p2 are the predictions associated with the two children of the decision node. 
     Standard decision trees can be generalized to general alternating decision trees to provide a more flexible semantics for representing classifiers. Standard decision trees define a partition of the instance space into disjoint regions. Most algorithms for learning decision trees work by iteratively splitting one of the partitions in two. Each part can be split at most once. In other words, only leaf nodes can be split. However, in general alternating decision trees each part can be split multiple times. Returning to the example, note that in the alternating tree depicted in  FIG. 2(   b ), each predictor node has at most one splitter node attached to it. In  FIG. 2(   c ), two splitter nodes were added to obtain an example of a general alternating tree. 
     A general alternating tree defines a classification rule as follows. An instance defines a set of paths in the alternating tree. When a path reaches a decision node, it continues with the child which corresponds to the outcome of the decision associated with the node. However, when reaching a prediction node, the path continues with all of the children of the node. More precisely, the path splits into a set of paths, each of which corresponds to one of the children of the prediction node. The union of all the paths reached in this way for a given instance is referred to as the “multi-path” associated with that instance. The sign of the sum of all the prediction nodes that are included in a multipath is the classification which the tree associates with the instance. As examples consider the following two instances: if a=1 and b=0.5 then the classification is sign(0.5+0.3−0.7−0.2+0.1)=sign(0.1)=+1; if a=5 and b=1 then the classification is sign(0.5+0.2+0.3)=sign(1.0)=+1. In both cases the classification is +1, however, the second prediction can be regarded as more confident then the first. 
     Formally, an alternating decision tree can be defined using the following notation and definitions, according to an embodiment of the invention. A base condition is a boolean predicate over instances. The symbol             is used to denote conjunction (AND),           is used to denote negation (NOT), and T denotes the constant predicate that is always true. A set of base conditions is denoted by Θ. A precondition is a conjunction of base conditions and negations of base conditions. A base rule r is a mapping from instances to real numbers which is defined in terms of a precondition c 1 , a base condition c 2 , and two real numbers a and b. The base rule maps each instance to a prediction that is defined to be a if c 1           c 2 , b if c 1                     c 2 , and 0 if          c 1 . A base rule is denoted by r and r(x) denotes the real value that the rule associates with the instance x. With these definitions, an alternating decision tree comprises a set of base rules that maps instances to real numbers. The set of base rules must obey the two following two conditions:
     (1) The set should include a base rule for which both the condition and the pre-condition are T. The a value of this rule is the prediction associated with the root of the tree. 
     (2) A base rule r with precondition d can be in the set only if the set includes a rule r′ with precondition c 1  and base condition c 2  such that d=c 1             c 2  or d=c 1                     c 2 . Here, d corresponds to the prediction node that is the direct parent of r.
     The alternating tree maps each instance to a real valued prediction which is the sum of the predictions of the base rules in its set. The classification of an instance is the sign of the prediction. 
     Thus, alternating trees can be defined as a sum of simple base rules. The base rules generate predictions that can be any real valued number. As a result, it is a simple matter to apply any boosting algorithm to learning alternating decision trees from examples. The only consideration here is that the set of base rules (sometimes called “weak hypotheses”) that are considered at each stage is not constant but increases as the tree is grown. 
     An alternating decision learning algorithm according to an embodiment of the invention is presented in  FIG. 3 . For expository purposes consider a set of inequality conditions that compares a single feature with a constant. This set of conditions is sufficiently restricted that it is feasible to enumerate all possible base rules that can be added to a given tree for a given training set. Referring to the figure, the algorithm at step 3.1 takes as input a training set (x 1 , y 1 ), . . . , (x m , y m ) where where x i  ε R d  and y i ε{−1,+1}, and a fixed set of base conditions denoted by Θ. The base conditions are Boolean predicates comparing a single feature and a constant. The algorithm maintains two sets, a set of preconditions and a set of rules. The symbols P t , R t , respectively, correspond to these two sets on boosting iteration t. The initial precondition set is P 1 ={T} at step 3.2. The algorithm associates a positive weight with each training example. Denote by w i,t  the weight of example number i on boosting iteration t. The initial weights are set at step 3.3 as w i,0 =1 for all examples 1≦i≦m. The set of rules comprising the tree is initialized at step 3.4 to a single base rule whose precondition and base condition are both T and whose first prediction value is 
             a   =       1   2     ⁢       ln   ⁡     (         W   +     ⁡     (   T   )           W   -     ⁡     (   T   )         )       .             
The notation W(c) represents the total weight of the training examples which satisfy the predicate c, and W + (c), W − (c) denote the total weight of those examples that satisfy c and are labeled +1 or −1 respectively (i.e. W(c)=W + (c)+W − (c). This rule represents the best constant prediction for the entire data set, and is placed at the root of the tree.
 
     The tree is grown iteratively starting at step 3.5, with one base rule added at a time. At step 3.6, a precondition c1 and base condition c2 are selected that minimize the function Z t (c 1 , c 2 ), as indicated in the figure. A new base rule is then added to the ADT at step 3.7 whose precondition is c 1 , base condition is c 2 , and whose two prediction values are 
             a   =       1   2     ⁢     ln   ⁡     (         W   +     ⁢     (       c   1     ⋀     c   2       )           W   -     ⁢     (       c   1     ⋀     c   2       )         )               
and
 
             b   =       1   2     ⁢       ln   ⁡     (         W   +     ⁡     (       c   1     ⋀     ⫬     c   2         )           W   1     ⁡     (       c   1     ⋀     ⫬     c   2         )         )       .             
The added base rule corresponds to a subtree with a decision node as its root and two prediction nodes as the leaves. This subtree is added as a child of a predictor node which may or may not be a leaf node. At step 3.8, the precondition set is updated with the addition of conditions c 1             c 2  and c 1                     c 2  to the set. The weights of each training example are updated at step 3.9 according to the equation in the figure. Note that if r(x i )=0, the weight is unchanged,

     After T iterations, the ADT represented by the set of base rules R T+1  is output at step 3.10. In this description, a criteria for stopping the boosting process has not been specified, or in other words, how to choose T, the maximum value for the iteration counter t. One exemplary, non-limiting technique for stopping the boosting uses a cross-validation. 
     When using the ADT to analyse and classify new data, the output, at step 3.11, is a classification rule that is the sign of the sum of the predictions of all of the base rules in R T+1 : 
     
       
         
           
             
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     The interpretation of alternating trees rests on the fact that the contribution of each decision node can be understood in isolation. Summing these contributions generates the prediction and the classification. After gleaning the meaning of each decision node in isolation one can analyze the interactions of the nodes. Parallel decision nodes represent little or no interaction. In contrast to the independence of parallel decision nodes, the significance of decision nodes in deeper level depends on the evaluation of their ancestral decision nodes. The decision-tree structure can represent dependences between indicators. The root of the tree is associated with an fixed (unconditional) contribution, which is the probability of a prediction before testing any feature value. All the contributions are summed in order to give the final prediction, and this prediction is thresholded to give the classification. This means that if the conditions given in the tree are tested serially, one accumulate evidence for or against the health of a person as one proceeds. If at some intermediate point during this process there is a sum whose absolute value is large, and the total contribution of all of the (untested) prediction nodes is small, then there is no need to continue the computation, as the current sign of the sum cannot change. The absolute value of the sum can be thought of as a measure of confidence of the classification. 
     The classification rules generated by combining an alternating tree with boosting, according to an embodiment of the invention, are often simpler and easier to interpret than those produced by previous learning techniques, and provide a measure of confidence. 
     SELDI, surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionisation, is an affinity-based mass spectrometric (MS) method in which proteins of interest are selectively absorbed to a chemically modified surface on a biochip, where impurities can be removed by washing with a buffer solution. This technology allows sensitive and high-throughput protein profiling of complex biological specimens. In a study to identify specific sets of depression diagnostic protein fingerprint based on. IMAC SELDI MS peak values to be used in a clinical setting, univariant analysis was applied to 24 IMAC SELDI MS peaks between 23 depression patients and 16 neurological controls. The statistical procedure is composed of standard t-test.  FIG. 4  is a table of results of a univariant analysis of IMAC SELDI 24 peaks between the 23 patients and 16 neurological controls. Referring to the table, the M/Z ratio is the top line, and the t-test value is the bottom line. 
     According to an embodiment of the invention, AdaBoost is used to learn decision rules comprising alternating decision trees, and these rules are combined through a weighted majority vote. This learning algorithm generated classification rules while determining the most discriminative SELDI MS peaks.  FIGS. 5(   a )-( b ) depict exemplary classifiers that resulted from analysing the IMAC SELDI data in (a) an alternating-tree format from 7 round AdaBoost training and (b) the corresponding rules, according to an embodiment of the invention. As shown in  FIG. 5  the alternating decision tree was applied to construct a classifier based on protein profiles. 
     Using this approach, the learning algorithm builds an alternating decision tree with a top-down strategy based on SELDI MS peaks values from depression patients vs. neurological control cases in this study. An alternating decision tree contains splitter nodes (associated with a test) and prediction nodes (associated with a value). At every boosting step, it selects and adds a new rule or equivalently a new unit consisting of a splitter node and two prediction nodes; and the weights are updated. The prediction values are chosen according to the calculation formula for updating the rule set in the boosting alternative decision tree algorithm presented in  FIG. 3 . The initial prediction value, given as −0.181 in  FIG. 5(   a ) at the root prediction node, is defined as ½ ln(W + (T)/W − T)) where W + (T) and W − (T) are, respectively, the sum of the weights of the positive (negative) examples that satisfy some condition. For the root prediction node, it is the initial “True” condition. 
     As shown in  FIG. 5(   a ), a diagnostic prediction based on SELDI MS peak values was indicated as a sign of the sum of the predictions along the related paths in the tree. The real value of this sum was used to determine the confidence in predicting depression. For example, if two SELDI MS peaks have m/z 29230.35 and m/z 8243.63 with a p-value value of 0.2889 and 0.645, respectively, which corresponds to one of the paths that terminates in the second node of  FIG. 5(   a ), then the sum of the predictions is (−0.181+0.104+1.708)=+1.631. Because the sum is positive, the algorithm classified this as +1, which means that these SELDI peaks diagnostically predicted depression with a high relative confidence (&gt;1.0 in this case). 
     A 10-fold cross validation test was performed to evaluate the predictive capacity of the molecular dialogistic procedure. Based on IMAC SELDI peaks data acquired in this study, 9/10 th  of the data from both positive and negative samples were randomly chosen as training set, and the learning method was tested on the remaining 1/10 th  of the data. This process was then repeated. The prediction results were benchmarked using 10-fold cross-validation and the true positive (TP), false positive (FP), true negative (TN) and false negative (FN) hits were calculated. Using this approach, the prediction capacity of the AdaBoost classification method was evaluated for sensitivity and specificity (Sensitivity=TP/(TP+FN); Specificity=TN/(TN+FP)).  FIG. 6  is a table of 10-fold cross validation results of a Boosting-based diagnosis, as applied to a depression vs. control dataset using the IMAC procedure, according to an embodiment of the invention. As shown in the table depicted in  FIG. 7 , it was found that the sensitivity of this diagnostic method is 53% and the specificity is 88%. 
     An ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve was utilized in this study to evaluate the diagnostic capacity of the method.  FIG. 7  depicts a graph of an ROC curve calculated based on 10-fold cross validation results for an AdaBoost prediction of depression vs. control, according to an embodiment of the invention. The ROC curve is a plot of the true positive rate (Sensitivity) against the false positive rate (1-specificity) for the different possible cut-off points of a diagnostic test. The ROC curve of  FIG. 7  indicated that there is considerable prediction ability based on IMAC SELDI data of depression. It may be further improved by utilizing more training samples. 
     Compared with high sensitivity and specificity (˜90%) of breast cancer experiments, the boosting-based alternating decision tree classification result of depression shows that although depression is greatly influenced by molecular biology, there are physiological, psychological and other factors existing in depression. A method according to an embodiment of the invention provides an automatic and integrative method for diagnosis of depression, and provides useful biomarkers of depression. 
     It is to be understood that the present invention can be implemented in various forms of hardware, software, firmware, special purpose processes, or a combination thereof. In one embodiment, the present invention can be implemented in software as an application program tangible embodied on a computer readable program storage device. The application program can be uploaded to, and executed by, a machine comprising any suitable architecture. 
       FIG. 8  is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system for implementing a boosting-based alternating decision tree classifier according to an embodiment of the invention. Referring now to  FIG. 8 , a computer system  81  for implementing the present invention can comprise, inter alia, a central processing unit (CPU)  82 , a memory  83  and an input/output (I/O) interface  84 . The computer system  81  is generally coupled through the I/O interface  84  to a display  85  and various input devices  86  such as a mouse and a keyboard. The support circuits can include circuits such as cache, power supplies, clock circuits, and a communication bus. The memory  83  can include random access memory (RAM), read only memory (ROM), disk drive, tape drive, etc., or a combinations thereof. The present invention can be implemented as a routine  87  that is stored in memory  83  and executed by the CPU  82  to process the signal from the signal source  88 . As such, the computer system  81  is a general purpose computer system that becomes a specific purpose computer system when executing the routine  87  of the present invention. 
     The computer system  81  also includes an operating system and micro instruction code. The various processes and functions described herein can either be part of the micro instruction code or part of the application program (or combination thereof) which is executed via the operating system. In addition, various other peripheral devices can be connected to the computer platform such as an additional data storage device and a printing device. 
     It is to be further understood that, because some of the constituent system components and method steps depicted in the accompanying figures can be implemented in software, the actual connections between the systems components (or the process steps) may differ depending upon the manner in which the present invention is programmed. Given the teachings of the present invention provided herein, one of ordinary skill in the related art will be able to contemplate these and similar implementations or configurations of the present invention. 
     While the present invention has been described in detail with reference to a preferred embodiment, those skilled in the art will appreciate that various modifications and substitutions can be made thereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.