Introduction

The present invention concerns the automated interpretation of data from a chromatography analysis, such as specifically retention times and concentration values of analytes in a mixture. An automated and practical integration method would be advantageous in many areas, including in the chemical/pharmaceutical sector, including for monitoring substances of abuse and drugs, in the environmental sector for monitoring air quality, and in the food industry for residual toxicological analyses of various foods.

Technical features

The method is intended to provide an automated procedure for chromatographic analysis, in order to automatically detect a) the location of a chromatographic peak, i.e. the retention times of an analyte of a mixture, and b) the calculation of the area subtended by a curve, i.e. the concentration value of the analyte. This unique and standardized procedure for analyzing chromatographic data would be able to easily quantify chromatographic peak curves that are difficult to evaluate, e.g. due to the presence of overlapping peaks. The procedure can be performed by any MATLAB® equivalent program designed to manage mathematical processing functions of collected and digitized measurement data. The proposed program can be combined with current chromatographic software, sold with the instrumentation, in order to improve the potential of the whole equipment, as well as with any chromatographic kit, in association with specific settings of program variables, aimed at the execution of a predetermined chromatographic method, characterized by specific peaks, specific AUC and specific retention times.

Possible Applications

• High pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) or other chromatographic analysis;
• Various analytical techniques, e.g. DNA sequencing, where an output diagram to be analysed provides a peak or many peaks in a valley-peak-valley pattern.

Advantages

• Automatic determination of retention times;
• Automatic calculation of the AUC, i.e. the concentration value of the analyte in the mixture;
• Reproducible and automated method, with no input of initial parameters or other operator intervention;
• Easily integrated with software already in use.