title: Longest distance shifting: A simple and efficient approach for the alignment of shifted chromatographic peaks.
abstract: The preprocessing of chromatograms, such as the alignment of retention time shifts, is often a crucial step in the proper data analysis chain. Here, an efficient approach to align shifted chromatographic signals, longest distance shifting, is presented and highlighted. The performance of this novel strategy was demonstrated by using both simulated chromatograms that covered the different kinds of retention time shifts and the real experimental chromatograms of Pudilan Xiaoyan Tablets obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection. The averaged correlation coefficient for experimental chromatograms were in the range of 0.9517-0.9840 and the peak factor was 0.9989. As a comparison, all the chromatograms have also been aligned using correlation optimized warping and Interval Correlation Optimized Shifting algorithms. The obtained results indicate that the longest distance shifting algorithm is simpler, faster and more effective, and will be potentially suitable for the alignment of other types of signals.
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Bao Qiong
authors.initials: BQ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Xue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Min Li
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: College of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, PR China.
authors.forename: Hong Lin
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Zhai
keywords: Chromatogram alignment; Correlation-optimized warping; Interval correlation optimized shifting; Longest distance shifting