Rapid Vector-Based Peak Fitting and Resolution Enhancement for Correlation Analyses of Raman Hyperspectra

Spectroscopic peak parameters are important since they provide information about the analyte under study. Besides obtaining these parameters, peak fitting also resolves overlapped peaks. Thus, the obtained parameters should permit the construction of a higher-resolution version of the original spectrum. However, peak fitting is not an easy task due to computational reasons and because the true nature of the analyte is often unknown. These difficulties are major impediments when large hyperspectral data sets need to be processed rapidly, such as for manufacturing process control. We have developed a novel and relatively fast two-part algorithm to perform peak fitting and resolution enhancement on such data sets. In the first part of the algorithm, estimates of the total number of bands and their parameters were obtained from a representative spectrum in the data set, using a combination of techniques. Starting with these parameter estimates, all the spectra were then iteratively and rapidly fitted with Gaussian bands, exploiting intrinsic features of the Gaussian distribution with vector operations. The best fits for each spectrum were retained. By reducing the obtained bandwidths and commensurately increasing their amplitudes, high-resolution spectra were constructed that greatly improved correlation-based analyses. We tested the performance of the algorithm on synthetic spectra to confirm that this method could recover the ground truth correlations between highly overlapped peaks. To assess effective peak resolution, the method was applied to low-resolution spectra of glucose and compared to results from high-resolution spectra. We then processed a larger spectral data set from mammalian cells, fixed with methanol or air drying, to demonstrate the resolution enhancement of the algorithm on complex spectra and the effects of resolution-enhanced spectra on two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy and principal component analyses. The results indicated that the algorithm would allow users to obtain high-resolution spectra relatively fast and permit the recovery of important aspects of the data's intrinsic correlation structure.