BACKGROUND: Many models have been proposed to detect copy number alterations in chromosomal copy number profiles, but it is usually not obvious to decide which is most effective for a given data set. Furthermore, most methods have a smoothing parameter that determines the number of breakpoints and must be chosen using various heuristics. RESULTS: We present three contributions for copy number profile smoothing model selection. First, we propose to select the model and degree of smoothness that maximizes agreement with visual breakpoint region annotations. Second, we develop cross-validation procedures to estimate the error of the trained models. Third, we apply these methods to compare 17 smoothing models on a new database of 575 annotated neuroblastoma copy number profiles, which we make available as a public benchmark for testing new algorithms. CONCLUSIONS: Whereas previous studies have been qualitative or limited to simulated data, our annotation-guided approach is quantitative and suggests which algorithms are fastest and most accurate in practice on real data. In the neuroblastoma data, the equivalent pelt.n and cghseg.k methods were the best breakpoint detectors, and exhibited reasonable computation times.

SUMMARY: More and more cancer studies use next-generation sequencing (NGS) data to detect various types of genomic variation. However, even when researchers have such data at hand, single-nucleotide polymorphism arrays have been considered necessary to assess copy number alterations and especially loss of heterozygosity (LOH). Here, we present the tool Control-FREEC that enables automatic calculation of copy number and allelic content profiles from NGS data, and consequently predicts regions of genomic alteration such as gains, losses and LOH. Taking as input aligned reads, Control-FREEC constructs copy number and B-allele frequency profiles. The profiles are then normalized, segmented and analyzed in order to assign genotype status (copy number and allelic content) to each genomic region. When a matched normal sample is provided, Control-FREEC discriminates somatic from germline events. Control-FREEC is able to analyze overdiploid tumor samples and samples contaminated by normal cells. Low mappability regions can be excluded from the analysis using provided mappability tracks. AVAILABILITY: C++ source code is available at: http://bioinfo.curie.fr/projects/freec/ CONTACT: [email protected] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.