Problems of Forensic Sciences 2012 Vol. 90 (XC) 115-125
DETERMINATION OF THE STATISTICAL ROBUSTNESSOF A GAS CHROMATOGRAPHIC METHOD DESIGNEDFOR HEROIN PROFILING BY PATTERN ANALYSIS USING CASE SAMPLES OF UNKNOWN ORIGINS
Kar-Weng CHAN1, 2, Guan-Huat TAN1, Richard C. S. WONG1
1Department of Chemistry, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2Department of Chemistry Malaysia, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
Streszczenie
This paper proposes pattern analysis for assessing the robustness of an analytical method via a statistical means. Two gas chromatographic methods optimized for heroin profiling were used to compare the method robustness. An established method and a relatively poor method were used respectively as a standard positive control method (PCM) and a negative control method (NCM) to demonstrate how a statistically robust method should perform in data interpretation. A total of 43 illicit heroin samples of unknown origins were analysed using both methods and the data distributions representing the relationships between the samples were obtained by principal component analysis. In the PCM, the data maintained its general pattern irrespective of how the data were manipulated. Pattern distortion was shown in the NCM and this suggested that the method was not statistically robust for heroin profiling.
Słowa kluczowe
Statistical robustness; GC; Heroin; Profiling.