High-dimensional pseudo-logistic regression and classification with applications to gene expression data

High dimension low sample size data, like the microarray gene expression levels, pose numerous challenges to conventional statistical methods. In the particular case of binary classification, some classification methods, such as the support vector machine (SVM), can efficiently deal with high-dimensional predictors, but lacks the accuracy in estimating the probability of membership of a class. In contrast, the traditional logistic regression (TLR) effectively estimates the probability of class membership for data with low-dimensional inputs, but does not handle high-dimensional cases. The study bridges the gap between SVM and TLR by their loss functions. Based on the proposed new loss function, a pseudo-logistic regression and classification approach which simultaneously combines the strengths of both SVM and TLR is also proposed. Simulation evaluations and real data applications demonstrate that for low-dimensional data, the proposed method produces regression estimates comparable to those of TLR and penalized logistic regression, and that for high-dimensional data, the new method possesses higher classification accuracy than SVM and, in the meanwhile, enjoys enhanced computational convergence and stability.