Testing the Relative Content of Berberine of Cortex Phellodendri Chinensis In Vivo by Multispectral Imaging Method

The multispectral imaging method is presented to test the relative content of berberine of cortex phellodendri chinensis (CP) in vivo. It is the first time that the method is applied to testing the traditional Chinese medicines. The testing system is the liquid crystal multispectral imaging system designed by ourselves. The samples coming from eight different producing areas are tested. As a comparison, the standard samples supplied by National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products are also tested. The spectral cube of each sample can be got by the method. A high-pass filter is designed to discard the noise dot of the spectral cube. At last, the character spectrums of CP are got. The character wavelength which can represent the content of berberine is 555 nm by analyzing the character spectrum. The quality of the samples can be decided since the berberine content is used to identify the quality of CP. The result shows that the multispectral imaging method can be used to test the quality of CP. Compared to other methods, the multispectral imaging method has merits such as fast, nondestructive, etc.