Quantifying brain tumor tissue abundance in HR-MAS spectra using non-negative blind source separation techniques

Given high-resolution magic angle spinning (HR-MAS) spectra from several glial tumor subjects, our goal is to differentiate between tumor tissue types by separating the different sources that contribute to the profile of each spectrum. Blind source separation techniques are applied for obtaining characteristic profiles for necrosis, highly cellular tumor and border tumor tissue and providing the contribution (abundance) of each of these tumor tissue types to the profile of each spectrum. The problem is formulated as a non-negative source separation problem. Non-negative matrix factorization, convex analysis of non-negative sources and non-negative independent component analysis methods are …