A graphical user interface as a new tool for scattering correction in fluorescence data

Abstract

Fluorescence spectroscopy in combination with chemometrics has proved to be a powerful tool for the study of complex systems with analytical purposes. Under ideal conditions, multidimensional fluorescence data have the natural property of fulfilling the mathematical concepts of bilinearity and trilinearity, which is a key for chemometric modelling. Nevertheless, in practice, these data can be affected by signal artefacts due to the light scattering phenomena. Given the fact that scattering signals do not contain chemical information, they must be removed or corrected. In most cases, the scattering correction involves the use of quite sophisticated computational algorithms that may not be accessible to all users. ?EEM_corr? is a MATLAB® chemometric toolbox that aims to offer a simple application for implementing scattering correction in fluorescence data through an easily managed and freely available graphical user interface. The program comprises the most commonly used approaches and allows the correction in manual, semi-automatic and automatic mode. Detailed descriptions of the software and fundamentals of the underlying methodologies implemented by the program are described.