The Application of Infrared Fingerprinting Technology

Throughout the history and development of Chinese herbal medicine, concerns have always been raised about the authenticity and quality assessment of the materials used. Initially identification of medicinal herbs was based mainly on personal experience. Later this developed into four major identification methods – identification by origin, identification by characteristics, microscopic identification, and identification by physico-chemical analysis. Spectroscopy is now commonly used in the identification of Chinese materia medica. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy involves shining a range of infrared frequencies through a sample of an organic compound and mapping the absorption of these frequencies on a graph.