Multi‐scale Gaussian/Haar wavelet strategies coupled with sub‐window factor analysis for an accurate alignment in nontargeted metabolic profiling to enhance herbal origin discrimination capability

Metabolic dataset can provide an overview of different herbal origin, which is conducted by some statistical procedures. Such results often deviate to a certain degree, due to peaks shifts in chromatographic signals. In order to solve this problem, an improved algorithm of combining sub-window factor analysis with the mass spectrum information is proposed. The algorithm uses a peak detection approach derived either from multi-scale Gaussian function or Haar wavelet to locate the peaks with different application scope; the candidate drift points at each peak are estimated by Fast Fourier transform cross correlation; Specifically, the best drift points at each candidate peaks are confirmed by sub-window factor analysis and mass spectrum information in nontargeted metabolic profiling. Finally, the peak regions were aligned against a reference chromatogram, and the non-peak regions were used linear interpolation. The chromatographic signals of 30 Bupleurum samples were aligned as an illustration of this algorithm, and they could be well distinguished using some statistical procedures. The result demonstrates that the presented method is stronger than other mass-spectra based algorithms, when facing the alignment of some co-eluted peaks.