A novel chromatographic peak alignment method coupled with trilinear decomposition for three dimensional chromatographic data analysis to obtain the second-order advantage.

The alignment of chromatographic peaks and deconvolution of overlapped peaks still remain challenges in the field of complex sample analysis. In this paper, we highlight a strategy that employs a new time shift alignment method derived from the well-known Rank Minimization method for aligning chromatographic peak shifts among samples and then uses trilinear decomposition methodology to interpret the overlapped chromatographic peaks in order to quantify analytes of interest. The performance of this novel strategy for chromatographic data analysis was evaluated using simulated chromatographic data as well as real chromatographic data. The results indicate that the new time shift alignment method can accurately correct time shifts in test samples even in the presence of unexpected interferences, and thus the low-rank trilinearity of the same analyte can be obtained, which will be helpful for trilinear decomposition to achieve the second-order advantage. Moreover, the results showed that this new alignment method is more automated in comparison with the Rank Minimization method and will be suitable for the alignment of the time shifts of analytes that are completely overlapped by coeluted interferences.