Integration methods

[lmatthe]

Does anyone have a good reference that describes "accepted" methods of peak integration? I have seen that ASTM has a standard on peak integration, but I do not have access to it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[danko]

Hi Laura,

It’s an interesting topic, but difficult to discus without a concrete example. Do you have data showing the issue? Or is it just a general discussion you’d like to start? The latter may be too large to come around in this forum. But if you post a chromatogram, demonstrating the different options you have, maybe it’ll facilitate the discussion.
I personally always insist on a blank injection/run, guiding the user through the baseline. So when the blank and the sample are overlaid, the baselines should align perfectly.
I’ve seen terrible examples of crawling baseline (in cases of inadequate separation) in order to obtain “valley to valleyâ€

[DR]

Rules of thumb:

You want at least 20 points over the course of your smaller peaks

Consistency is good

Even the very best CDS can't fix bad chromatography

Beyond that, it's pretty much a function of figuring out what parameters and/or events will yield reasonable, consistent integration throughout a given data set.

[tom jupille]

If you want to get into details, the "standard" reference is Dyson's book on Chromatographic Integration Techniques:
http://tinyurl.com/yskt76

DR actually gave you the "bottom line". The most important part of which is

Even the very best CDS can't fix bad chromatography