ChroMATHography: Solving Chromatographic Issues with Mathematical Models and Intuitive Graphics

Chemometrics in the form of preprocessing methods and factor models offers a multitude of solutions to common chromatographic problems/artifacts. The intermediate step, the chromatographers that use the equipment and transform a sample into a lot of numbers must be aware of where one can benefit the most when fine-tuning the individual method parameters. The overall signal of a chromatogram can be divided into three constituting parts, the analytical signal, background signal and noise. Sometimes it is not possible to achieve perfect separation, either because of the complexity of the sample or because faster chromatographic runs are preferred. The structure of the data to be analyzed depends on the number of separation steps and the detectors. The family of factor models techniques emerged from the need for solving the problems when separation cannot be improved by optimizing the chromatographic conditions.