Computational Frameworks Integrating Deep Learning and Statistical Models in Mining Multimodal Omics Data

BackgroundIn health research, multimodal omics data analysis is widely used to address important clinical and biological questions. Traditional statistical methods rely on the strong assumptions of distribution. Statistical methods such as testing and differential expression are commonly used in omics analysis. Deep learning, on the other hand, is an advanced computer science technique that is powerful in mining high-dimensional omics data for prediction tasks. Recently, integrative frameworks or methods have been developed for omics studies that combine statistical models and deep learning algorithms.Methods and resultsThe aim of these integrative frameworks is to combine the strengths of both statistical methods and deep learning algorithms to improve prediction accuracy while also providing interpretability and explainability. This review report discusses the current state of the integrative frameworks, their limitations, and potential future directions in survival and time-to-event longitudinal analysis, dimension reduction and clustering, regression and classification, feature selection, and causal and transfer learning.