New Infrared Spectrometer Tests Chinese Medicine Accuracy Up to 99%

According to a Hong Kong Wen Wei Po report, the scientific team led by Dr. Zhang Xiaoming, an associate professor of the Department of Computer Science at the Hong Kong Baptist University, has successfully developed a detection system based on the characteristics of infrared spectroscopy. The authenticity of medicinal materials can be determined within minutes, with an accuracy of 99%. The variety and origin of medicinal herbs can be detected with an accuracy of 94% and a lower cost. At present, its core infrared spectral feature extraction technology has been granted the invention patent right by the State Intellectual Property Office of China.

With the internationalization of Chinese medicine, the quality of Chinese herbal medicines plays an important role in ensuring the efficacy and safety of Chinese medicines. There are roughly two methods for the detection of traditional Chinese medicines. The first one is to observe the shape, color, odor, size and other characteristics of medicinal materials. It requires experienced test personnel to perform, but sometimes human errors are inevitable. Another method is to use physicochemical analysis to accurately analyze the ratio of a particular ingredient in herbs. However, it requires complicated physical and chemical processes, which takes a long time to analyze and costs high.

Therefore, Dr. Zhang studies the use of infrared spectrometers to scan Chinese herbal medicines, and uses the scanned infrared spectroscopy fingerprints to interpret the macroscopic data of the chemical constituents of Chinese herbal medicines so that the varieties, origins, and growth patterns of the Chinese herbal medicines can be quickly resolved. And macro quality series information. Users only need to use the instrument to scan medicinal materials and log in to the online database for comparison. It takes only a few minutes to learn about the variety and origin of the medicinal materials. The accuracy is as high as 94%, and the accuracy of medicinal herbs is as high as 99%. Can quickly distinguish the authenticity.

Dr. Zhang said: “The quality of Chinese herbal medicines depends on the chemical composition and the proportion of each ingredient, and it is closely related to its origin and growth pattern. By finding out the real origin and growth pattern of Chinese herbal medicines, it can be used as a macroscopically Material quality identification provides a quick and easy method.” Dr. Zhang expects that the system can provide low-cost and simple detection methods for Chinese medicine factories, food safety centers or government departments, which will help protect the quality of Chinese medicine. However, due to the limitations of the sample, the system can only detect four kinds of medicinal materials, including peony, Tianma, Salvia miltiorrhiza, and Yinyanghuo. In addition, valuable medicinal herbs are expensive. If you want to collect enough sample production databases, the cost will be enormous. However, Baptist Convention will cooperate with private companies and governments to expand the database samples.

Finally, Dr. Zhang said that in the future, the system can not only detect the variety and macroscopic quality of Chinese herbal medicines, but it can also be used to develop food and alcohol testing in the future, such as identifying the authenticity of milk powder and the quality of red wine.