Abstract: Applying DNA microarray data to diagnose for cancer and recognize different subtypes of the same tumor has been becoming one of hot topics in I3ioinformatics. Firstly, this paper summarized the state of the art and the development trend for cancer classification based on microarray data. Then the basic procedure of DNA microarray experiments, structure & characteristics of microarray data and general process for cancer classification based on DNA microarray data were introduced. After that,a detailed survey and systemic comparative analysis combined with the research results for the last ten years was made from several main aspects listed as below; data preprocessing, feature gene selection, classifier design & classification performance evaluation. Finally, some subsistent difficulties in this research field were summarized and meanwhile, the possible directions for future work were also predicted and suggested.

Key words: Microarray data, Cancer classification, Data preprocessing, Feature gene selection, Classifier design, Classificanon performance evaluation