Signal Processing in Proteomics

Computational proteomics applications are often imagined as a pipeline, where information is processed in each stage before it flows to the next one. Independent of the type of application, the first stage invariably consists of obtaining the raw mass spectrometric data from the spectrometer and preparing it for use in the later stages by enhancing the signal of interest while suppressing spurious components. Numerous approaches for preprocessing MS data have been described in the literature. In this chapter, we will describe both, standard techniques originating from classical signal and image processing, and novel computational approaches specifically tailored to the analysis of MS data sets. We will focus on low level signal processing tasks such as baseline reduction, denoising, and feature detection.