Computerized Automation in Acquisition and Processing of Patterns from High-Pressure Ion-Exchange Chromatography

Fully automated generation, recording, storing, and processing of complex chromatograms demand sophisticated laboratory instrumentation and computer implementation. In the high-resolution liquid-chromatographic system for body fluids analyses we use in our clinical laboratory, the chromatograph is interfaced to a 2114 Hewlett-Packard minicomputer that accomplishes, in an on-line mode, analog-to-digital conversion, reductive averaging of sampled data, transformation from transmittance to absorbance units, and storage of the digitized spectrum on a peripheral disk. The information on disk is eventually transferred to a library of spectral files resident on a direct-access disk associated with an IBM 360/ Model 65 computer. These data files serve as the input source for program COCOA, written in Fortran IV for the IBM 360 computer, which provides the following processing: ( a ) iterative polynomial smoothing; ( b ) sectionally linear baseline tracking; ( c ) peak and envelope detection and delineation; ( d ) least-squares gaussian resolution of up to five component peaks in an envelope; and ( e ) location, size, and shape quantification of peaks. The capability and merits of program COCOA as an off-line procedure on a maxicomputer for the analysis of chromatograms are discussed.