Asian Journal
Of Traditional Medicines

Abstract: Spectral fingerprint including ultraviolet (UV) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and combusion heat analysis, potential
analytic techniques for rapid screening and elementary quality judgement were employed and compared for discriminating
Ginkgo tablets (GT) from different commercial brands. The systematic quantified fingerprint method (SQFM) was applied and
compared with principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) respectively for above testing
methods. According to the comparison related to different analyitcal tools, the rationality of combination UV with IR fingerprints
was satisfactorily validated by combusion heat. It indicated classification methods assayed, PCA and HCA enabled us to make
a good discrimination; but they failed to present a detailed quality difference except for obvious unqualified ones instead of
the SQFM. And qualitative similarity analysis by the SQFM is poor to lead to a evident discrimination between samples. So
comprehensively quantified outcomes were finally presented as follows: sample S4 and S8 were thought as outliers while S1 and
S12 might be worse than the rest in the extent of our present work. Combination of multiple analytical methods with various data
handling ways is useful for the overall quality evluation of herbal medicine or their preparations.

Key words: spectral fingerprint, systematic quantified fingerprint method, chemometrics, combusion heat, Ginkgo Tablets