Raman chemical feature extraction for quality control of dairy products

As a fast information acquisition technique, Raman spectroscopy can be used to control the quality of dairy products. Feature extraction is a necessary processing step to improve the efficiency of Raman spectral data. Principal component analysis is a traditional method that can effectively extract the features and reduce the dimension of spectral data. However, it is difficult to analyze the chemical information of the extracted feature, thus limiting its practical application. In this work, Raman spectral chemical feature extraction was carried out. The quality control of Dingxin dairy products (a famous dairy brand in China; purchased from Heilongjiang Zhaodong Tianlong Dairy Co. Ltd., Heilongjiang, China) was used as an example. Raman peak intensity, peak area, and peak ratio were extracted as chemical features and further investigated using Euclidean distance and the quality fluctuation control chart. The potential quality discrimination ability of the Raman feature extraction methods was demonstrated. The results showed that the Puzhen dairy products (purchased from Inner Mongolia Yinuo Halal Food Co. Ltd., Inner Mongolia, China) and Xueyuan dairy products (used as a control; purchased from Inner Mongolia Wulanchabu City Jining Xueyuan Dairy Co. Ltd., Inner Mongolia, China) could be distinguished from Dingxin dairy products when the Raman chemical features special peak intensity, peak area, and peak ratio were used, and their discriminatory ability increased in sequence. Hence, it was shown that Raman chemical feature extraction can achieve quality control and discriminant analysis of dairy products and that the spectral information is clear.