lmhPlot {beadarray} | R Documentation

## Plot the bead-level hybridisation controls

### Description

Function for retrieving and plotting the hybridisation controls for an expression array. We know these controls should show high signal and are therefore useful for QA purposes. Moreover, we should expect to see a gradient between the low, medium and high controls. By considering all bead observations (unlike the plots produced by BeadStudio) we get an detailed impression of array quality.

### Usage

    lmhPlot(BLData, array = 1, plot = FALSE)

### Arguments

`BLData` | BeadLevelList object for an Illumina expression array which must have the annotation slot set appropriately.
`array` | The number of the array of interest
`plot` | If TRUE then a diagnostic plot will be produced, other only summary values will be returned.

### Details

The annotation stored with the BLData object in the annotation is used to find the IDs of the hybridisation controls. We try and find these controls among the bead-level data for the array. If not all the control IDs can be found, then the wrong annotation may be stored for the array and the function will report an error. If found, we test the replicates of the low, medium and high controls for detection using the same criteria as used by Illumina (implemented in the `calculateDetection` function). However, an important difference is that we test each bead observation individually and report for each bead-type the percentage of beads detected.

The function returns five measures that can be used to evaluate the quality of the array (see below). On a good quality array, we would expect to see 100% for all these measures and a drop from 100% could indicate a defect on the array. However, it should be noted that the HvsM percentage could drop below 100% often due to the saturation effect often observed at high intensity.

If a plot is requested, the intensities of the hybridisation controls are plotted on a y-axis and grouped according to different control-type (low, medium or high concentration) on the x-axis. Some arrays may have more than one bead-type for a particular control.

### Value

`LowDet` | %age of ``low'' control beads that are detected compared to the negative controls.
`MedDet` | %age of ``medium'' control beads that are detected compared to the negative controls.
`HighDet` | %age of ``high'' control beads that are detected compared to the negative controls.
`MvsL` | %age of ``medium'' control beads that are detected compared to the ``low'' controls.
`HvsM` | %age of ``high'' control beads that are detected compared to the ``medium'' controls.

### Author(s)

Mark Dunning

### References

see www.illumina.com/downloads/GX_QualityControl_TechNote.pdf for description of the hybridisation controls

### See Also

`calculateBeadLevelScores`, `setAnnotation`, `calculateDetection`

[Package beadarray version 1.12.1 Index]