Design criteria of a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry based expert system for arson analysis

✍ Scribed by G. Holzer; W. Bertsch; Q.W. Zhang

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 927 KB
• Volume: 259
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2670
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2670(92)85372-d

✦ Synopsis

An analysis system IS presented that IS speclflcally geared toward the detection of petroleum based volatdes m suspect arson samples Advantage IS taken of the high selectivity of mass spectrometry toward ahphatlc and aromatic hydrocarbons Data acqmred by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry are subjected to automated post run data treatment The system attempts to categorize chromatograpluc profiles by estabhslung the presence of key components Comparison IS made to data from standards stored m the memory of the computer Retention time mformatlon as well as mass spectral crltena are used Based on the detection of diagnostic components and determmatlon of theu relatwe mtensltles, samples are categorized as falling mto one of five categones of petroleum based accelerants Extensive use 1s made of Macro programming The rationale of the search routme IS dlscussed and details of the program structure are provided A typical example IS presented