Imputation for Lipidomics and Metabolomics (ImpLiMet): a web-based application for optimization and method selection for missing data imputation.

Abstract

Motivation: Missing values are prevalent in high-throughput measurements due to various experimental or analytical reasons. Imputation, the process of replacing missing values in a dataset with estimated values, plays an important role in multivariate and machine learning analyses. The three missingness patterns, including missing completely at random, missing at random, and missing not at random, describe unique dependencies between the missing and observed data. The optimal imputation method for each dataset depends on the type of data, the cause of the missingness, and the nature of relationships between the missing and observed data. The challenge is to identify the optimal imputation solution for a given dataset.

Results: ImpLiMet: is a user-friendly web-platform that enables users to impute missing data using eight different methods. For a given dataset, ImpLiMet suggests the optimal imputation solution through a grid search-based investigation of the error rate for imputation across three missingness data simulations. The effect of imputation can be visually assessed by histogram, kurtosis, and skewness, as well as principal component analysis comparing the impact of the chosen imputation method on the distribution and overall behavior of the data.

Availability and implementation: ImpLiMet is freely available at https://complimet.ca/shiny/implimet/ and https://github.com/complimet/ImpLiMet.