Information theory applied to chromatographic fingerprint of herbal medicine for quality control.

At present, the construction of chromatographic fingerprints plays an important role in the quality control of complex herbal medicines. In this work, information theory was applied to obtain chromatographic fingerprints with good performance. Moreover, according to the characteristics of the chromatographic fingerprints obtained, some modifications of the calculation of the information content were conducted. In comparison with the information content from several chromatographic fingerprints obtained, reliable chromatographic fingerprints with a high separation degree and uniform concentration distribution of chemical components could be determined. The successful application of information theory with modification to simulated chromatographic fingerprints together with real herbal medicines such as Rhizoma chuanxiong and Ginkgo biloba from different sources demonstrated clearly that the proposed method to determine chromatographic fingerprints was reasonable and reliable and it was user-friendly. Chromatographic fingerprints determined with high separation degrees and uniform concentration distribution of chemical ingredients might also chemically represent characteristic components of herbal medicines for quality control.