Computerized chromatographic peak detection using the trigg tracking signal. An application devised for use with an...

Manual integration of the amino acid peaks from physiological samples produced by conventional anion exchange liquid chromatography is a time-consuming process. This paper describes a combined unit, consisting of an analog to digital converter and a personal computer, which was connected in parallel with the chart recorder and the analyser's 570 nm channel of the colorimeter. The computer was programmed to log the digitized data, detect the start, maximum and end of each chromatographic peak, calculate the area under the peak and its retention time and provide a printout of the results at the end of the elution program. The computer program successfully exploited the Trigg Tracking Signal as both a peak detection and as a moving baseline monitoring device. This approach proved to have an equivalent performance to the manual method for 17 out of the 19 amino acids normally quantitated in physiological samples. The automated detection and quantitation of arginine was unsatisfactory due to its characteristically low profile peak shape, and proline was not measured because the device was not connected to the 440 nm channel of the colorimeter. The automated system provided economic and analytically acceptable solutions to the problem of providing an online integrator versatile enough to be used with the 255 min long amino acid analysis of physiological fluids.