On the estimation of sugars concentrations using Raman spectroscopy and artificial neural networks

Key steps for improving bacterial SERS signals in complex samples: Separation, recognition, detection, and analysis

Rapid and reliable detection of pathogenic bacteria is absolutely essential for research in environmental science, food quality, and medical diagnostics. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), as an emerging spectroscopic technique, has the advantages of high sensitivity, good selectivity, rapid detection speed, and portable operation, which has been broadly used in the detection of pathogenic bacteria in different kinds of complex samples. However, the SERS detection method is also challenging in dealing with the detection difficulties of bacterial samples in complex matrices, such as interference from complex matrices, confusion of similar bacteria, and complexity of data processing. Therefore, researchers have developed some technologies to assist in SERS detection of bacteria, including both the front-end process of obtaining bacterial sample data and the back-end data processing process. The review summarizes the key steps for improving bacterial SERS signals in complex samples: separation, recognition, detection, and analysis, highlighting the principles of each step and the key roles for SERS pathogenic bacteria analysis, and the interconnectivity between each step. In addition, the current challenges in the practical application of SERS technology and the development trends are discussed. The purpose of this review is to deepen researchers' understanding of the various stages of using SERS technology to detect bacteria in complex sample matrices, and help them find new breakthroughs in different stages to facilitate the detection and control of bacteria in complex samples.

Deep metric learning framework combined with Gramian angular difference field image generation for Raman spectra classification based on a handheld Raman spectrometer

Rapid identification of unknown material samples using portable or handheld Raman spectroscopy detection equipment is becoming a common analytical tool. However, the design and implementation of a set of Raman spectroscopy-based devices for substance identification must include spectral sampling of standard reference substance samples, resolution matching between different devices, and the training process of the corresponding classification models. The process of selecting a suitable classification model is frequently time-consuming, and when the number of classes of substances to be recognised increases dramatically, recognition accuracy decreases dramatically. In this paper, we propose a fast classification method for Raman spectra based on deep metric learning networks combined with the Gramian angular difference field (GADF) image generation approach. First, we uniformly convert Raman spectra acquired at different resolutions into GADF images of the same resolution, addressing spectral dimension disparities induced by resolution differences in different Raman spectroscopy detection devices. Second, a network capable of implementing nonlinear distance measurements between GADF images of different classes of substances is designed based on a deep metric learning approach. The Raman spectra of 450 different mineral classes obtained from the RRUFF database were converted into GADF images and used to train this deep metric learning network. Finally, the trained network can be installed on an embedded computing platform and used in conjunction with portable or handheld Raman spectroscopic detection sensors to perform material identification tasks at various scales. A series of experiments demonstrate that our trained deep metric learning network outperforms existing mainstream machine learning models on classification tasks of different sizes. For the two tasks of Raman spectral classification of natural minerals of 260 classes and Raman spectral classification of pathogenic bacteria of 8 classes with significant noise, our suggested model achieved 98.05% and 90.13% classification accuracy, respectively. Finally, we also deployed the model in a handheld Raman spectrometer and conducted identification experiments on 350 samples of chemical substances attributed to 32 classes, achieving a classification accuracy of 99.14%. These results demonstrate that our method can greatly improve the efficiency of developing Raman spectroscopy-based substance detection devices and can be widely used in tasks of unknown substance identification.

Sugar Detection in Aqueous Solution Using an SMS Fiber Device

We report on the fabrication and testing of a fiber optics sensor based on multimodal interference effects, which aims at the detection of different types of sweeteners dissolved in water. The device, which has a simple structure, commonly known as the SMS configuration, is built by splicing a segment of commercial-grade, coreless multimode fiber (NC-MMF) between two standard single-mode fibers (SMFs). In this configuration, the evanescent field traveling outside the core of the NC-MMF allows the sensing of the refractive index of the surrounding media, making it possible to detect different levels of sugar concentration. The optical sensor was tested with aqueous solutions of glucose, fructose, and sucrose in the concentration range from 0 wt% to 20 wt% at room temperature. The proposed device exhibits a linear response with a sensitivity of 0.1835 nm/wt% for sucrose, 0.1687 nm/wt% for fructose, and 0.1694 nm/wt% for glucose, respectively, with a sensing resolution of around 0.5 wt%. Finally, we show that, despite having similar concentration behavior, some degree of discrimination between the different sugars can be achieved by assessing their thermo-optical response.

Navigating with chemometrics and machine learning in chemistry

Chemometrics and machine learning are artificial intelligence-based methods stirring a transformative change in chemistry. Organic synthesis, drug discovery and analytical techniques are incorporating machine learning techniques at an accelerated pace. However, machine-assisted chemistry faces challenges while solving critical problems in chemistry due to complex relationships in data sets. Even with increasing publishing volumes on machine learning, its application in areas of chemistry is not a straightforward endeavour. A particular concern in applying machine learning in chemistry is data availability and reproducibility. The present review article discusses the various chemometric methods, expert systems, and machine learning techniques developed for solving problems of organic synthesis and drug discovery with selected examples. Further, a concise discussion on chemometrics and ML deployed in analytical techniques such as, spectroscopy, microscopy and chromatography are presented. Finally, the review reflects the challenges, opportunities and future perspectives on machine learning and automation in chemistry. The review concludes by pondering on some tough questions on applying machine learning and their possibility of navigation in the different terrains of chemistry.

Characterizing viral samples using machine learning for Raman and absorption spectroscopy

Machine learning methods can be used as robust techniques to provide invaluable information for analyzing biological samples in pharmaceutical industries, such as predicting the concentration of viral particles of interest in biological samples. Here, we utilized both convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and random forests (RFs) to predict the concentration of the samples containing measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella-zoster viruses (ProQuad®) based on Raman and absorption spectroscopy. We prepared Raman and absorption spectra data sets with known concentration values, then used the Raman and absorption signals individually and together to train RFs and CNNs. We demonstrated that both RFs and CNNs can make predictions with R2 values as high as 95%. We proposed two different networks to jointly use the Raman and absorption spectra, where our results demonstrated that concatenating the Raman and absorption data increases the prediction accuracy compared to using either Raman or absorption spectrum alone. Additionally, we further verified the advantage of using joint Raman-absorption with principal component analysis. Furthermore, our method can be extended to characterize properties other than concentration, such as the type of viral particles.

Quantification of glycated hemoglobin and glucose in vivo using Raman spectroscopy and artificial neural networks

Undiagnosed type 2 diabetes (T2D) remains a major public health concern. The global estimation of undiagnosed diabetes is about 46%, being this situation more critical in developing countries. Therefore, we proposed a non-invasive method to quantify glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and glucose in vivo. We developed a technique based on Raman spectroscopy, RReliefF as a feature selection method, and regression based on feed-forward artificial neural networks (FFNN). The spectra were obtained from the forearm, wrist, and index finger of 46 individuals. The use of FFNN allowed us to achieve an error in the predictive model of 0.69% for HbA1c and 30.12 mg/dL for glucose. Patients were classified according to HbA1c values into three categories: healthy, prediabetes, and T2D. The proposed method obtained a specificity and sensitivity of 87.50% and 80.77%, respectively. This work demonstrates the benefit of using artificial neural networks and feature selection techniques to enhance Raman spectra processing to determine glycated hemoglobin and glucose in patients with undiagnosed T2D.

A new method for detecting mixed bacteria based on multi-wavelength transmission spectroscopy technology

Previously, we successfully realized the identification of a single species of bacteria based on the multi-wavelength transmission spectrum of bacteria. The current research is focused on realizing the spectral analysis of mixed bacteria. Principal component analysis-Monte Carlo (PCA-MC) model was developed for the implementation of spectral separation of mixed bacteria by obtaining the ratio of components. And, the separated spectrum was regarded as the model input of the neural network concentration inversion model to obtain the concentration of each bacteria in the mix. Mean relative errors in component analysis of mixing S.aureus with K.pneumoniae, mixing S.aureus with S.typhimurium twice, mixing K.pneumoniae with S.typhimurium are 3%, 2%, 3.9% and 6.1%, respectively. The coefficient of determination (R²) of validation set and test set are 0.9947 and 0.9954 in concentration inversion model. The results show that this method can quickly and accurately determine the component ratio and concentration information in the mixed bacteria. A new method was proposed to separate the spectrum of mixed bacteria effectively and measure its concentration quickly, which makes a big step forward in the detection and online monitoring of waterborne microbial contamination based on multi-wavelength transmission spectroscopy.

Rapid identification of ore minerals using multi-scale dilated convolutional attention network associated with portable Raman spectroscopy

Electron portable Raman spectroscopy tools for ore mineral identification are widely used in raw ore analysis and mineral process engineering. This paper demonstrates an extremely fast and accurate method for identifying unknown ore mineral samples by portable Raman spectroscopy from the RRUFF database. Resampling and background subtraction procedures are used to eliminate the influence of the Raman spectrometer and fluorescence scattering. For the complex mineral spectral classification task, a multi-scale dilated convolutional attention network is designed. In addition, to investigate the identification performance of our method, several machine learning and two basic deep learning models, including k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), cosine similarity, extreme gradient boosting machine (XGBoost), Alexnet and ResNet 18, are also developed on the mineral spectra database and applied for mineral identification. Comparative studies show that our CNN network outperforms other models with state-of-the-art results, achieving a top-1 accuracy of 89.51% and a top-3 accuracy of 96.54%. The function of each module and the explanations of the feature extraction in our CNN network were analyzed by ablation experiments and the Grad-CAM algorithm. The identification of ore mineral samples also proves the outstanding performance of our method. In conclusion, the proposed novel approach that exploits the advantages of portable Raman spectroscopy and a deep learning method is promising for rapidly identifying ore mineral samples.