Evaluation of herbal chromatographic fingerprint identification systems

Similarity analysis of chromatographic fingerprints of herbal medicines is an intuitive herbal identification approach. Nowadays, there are several professional and popular systems performing similarity analysis of chromatographic fingerprints. This research aims to analyze how effective these systems in identifying and discriminating herbs. The analysed systems included Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprinting of Traditional Chinese Medicine Version 2004A (System-S) from the State Food and Drug Administration of China (SFDA), Chromatographic Fingerprint Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Data Management System (System-N) used by Natural Institutes for Food and Drug Control of China (NIFDC), and Traditional Chinese Medicine Quality Control System (System-C) which was developed by Central South University (CSU). These three systems were evaluated with 9 samples of Pueraria lobata (Gegen), and 11 samples of Pueraria Thomsonii (Fenge). The results were analysed and discussed to determine their effectiveness in discriminating these herbs.