Uncertainty-aware single-cell annotation with a hierarchical reject option

AbstractAutomatic cell type annotation methods assign cell type labels to new datasets by extracting relationships from a reference RNA-seq dataset. However, due to the limited resolution of gene expression features, there is always uncertainty present in the label assignment. To enhance the reliability and robustness of annotation, most machine learning methods address this uncertainty by providing a full reject option, i.e. when the predicted confidence score of a cell type label falls below a user-defined threshold, no label is assigned and no prediction is made. As a better alternative, some methods deploy hierarchical models and consider a so-called partial rejection by returning internal nodes of the hierarchy as label assignment. However, because a detailed experimental analysis of various rejection approaches is missing in the literature, there is no consensus on best practices, superiority of certain methods, and potential drawbacks associated with rejection. We evaluate three annotation approaches (1) full rejection (2) partial rejection and (3) no rejection for both flat and hierarchical probabilistic classifiers. Our findings indicate that hierarchical classifiers are superior when rejection is applied, with partial rejection being the preferred rejection approach, as it preserves a significant amount of label information. For optimal rejection implementation, the rejection threshold should be determined through careful examination of a methods rejection behavior. Without rejection, flat and hierarchical annotation perform equally well, as long as the cell type hierarchy accurately captures transcriptomic relationships.