Determination of the component number in overlapping multicomponent chromatogram using wavelet transform

Component number in overlapping multicomponent chromatogram was determined by a novel method—wavelet transform. Because of the characteristic of the double localization in time and frequency domain, the wavelet transform can decompose an overlapping chromatogram into contributions of different frequency. Among these contributions, there will be contributions which will represent the resolved chromatographic signals because their frequency is higher than the overlapping signal and lower than the high frequency noise. Therefore, the component number of an overlapping chromatogram can be determined by the number of peaks in the resolved chromatogram. Simulated data sets and a seriously overlapping 5-component chromatogram were investigated by the method. It was proved that the wavelet transform is a very easy and convenient method for detecting the component number in overlapping multicomponent chromatograms.