Abstract (eng)
The increased popularity of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), in particular traditional Chinese herbal therapies,
calls for a drastic improvement in testing methods to ensure proper verification and quality control of these
nonindigenous medicinal substances. The current methods employed in substance identification include microscopy and thin layer chromatography (TLC),
as well as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a method also useful in the quantitative analysis of said substances.
This study introduces yet another method of identification and characterization of traditional Chinese medicinal
drugs: infrared spectroscopy (IR spectroscopy). Extracts and raw drugs
are measured at mid-infrared (MIR) by attenuated total reflectance (ATR) and near-infrared (NIR) levels through the implementation of diffuse reflectance.
In currently used methods of statistical evaluation of IR spectra (cluster analysis, IDENT method), congruences
in the measurements are clearly evident. The results achieved with MIR by ATR,
however, indicate increased accuracy, therefore proving IR spectroscopy by ATR to be the prefered method of testing.
To further ensure accuracy, the ATR spectra of the extracts also undergo the additional scrutiny of discriminant and
canonical correlation analysis, which leads to a massive reduction of data. This method provides for a clearer
classification and grouping of the different measurements with fewer data points.