The application of a Tchebichef moment method to the quantitative analysis of multiple compounds based on three-dimensional HPLC fingerprint spectra

Three-dimensional (3D) fingerprint spectra provide a wealth of information for the quantitative analysis of multiple target compounds in mixtures. In this paper, a Tchebichef moment method based on the 3D fingerprint spectra obtained from high performance liquid chromatography coupled with a photodiode array detector was proposed and used to determine notoginsenoside R1, ginsenoside Rg1, ginsenoside Re and ginsenoside Rb1 in samples of a traditional Chinese Medicine (Sanqi Panax Notoginseng). The correlation coefficients of the established models were more than 0.9955 within the test ranges, the recovery ranged from 98.41% to 108.00%, and the intra- and inter-day precisions were less than 3.83% and 5.04%, respectively. The obtained results indicated that the Tchebichef moment method had effective feature representation capability and provided satisfactory quantification accuracy. Furthermore, several moment methods applied in analytical chemistry were compared, which provided a valuable insight into the application of moment methods in the analytical field.