RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN MULTIVARIATE CALIBRATION

With the goal of understanding global chemical processes,environmental chemists have some of the mostcomplex sample analysis problems.Multivariate calibration is a tool that can be applied successfully inmany situations where traditional univariate analyses cannot.The purpose of this paper is to reviewmultivariate calibration,with an emphasis being placed on the developments in recent years.The inverseand classical models are discussed briefly,with the main emphasis on the biased calibration methods.Principal component regression(PCR)and partial least squares(PLS)are discussed,along with methodsfor quantitative and qualitative validation of the calibration models.Non-linear PCR,non-linear PLSand locally weighted regression are presented as calibration methods for non-linear data.Finally,calibration techniques using a matrix of data per sample(second-order calibration)are discussed briefly.     

THE EFFECT OF MEAN CENTERING ON PREDICTION IN MULTIVARIATE CALIBRATION

Traditionally,one form of preprocessing in multivariate calibration methods such as principal componentregression and partial least squares is mean centering the independent variables(responses)and thedependent variables(concentrations).However,upon examination of the statistical issue of errorpropagation in multivariate calibration,it was found that mean centering is not advised for some datastructures.In this paper it is shown that for response data which(i)vary linearly with concentration,(ii)have no baseline(when there is a component with a non-zero response that does not change inconcentration)and(iii)have no closure in the concentrations(for each sample the concentrations of allcomponents add to a constant,e.g.100%)it is better not to mean center the calibration data.That is,the prediction errors as evaluated by a root mean square error statistic will be smaller for a model madewith the raw data than a model made with mean-centered data.With simulated data relativeimprovements ranging from 1% to 13% were observed depending on the amount of error in thecalibration concentrations and responses.