Rapid Determination of the Main Compounds in Crude and Processed Atractylodes macrocephala Using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy with Attenuated Total Reflectance

Infrared spectroscopy with attenuated total reflectance was investigated for the rapid determination of atractylenolide I and atractylenolide III contained in crude and processed Atractylodes macrocephala. High performance liquid chromatography was used as a reference method for the analysis, and a multivariate calibration model based on a partial least squares algorithm was developed to correlate the spectra and values determined by the reference method. The results suggested that the relative deviation of the predicted contents of atractylenolide I and atractylenolide III in the samples were less than 5.0%, which proved the stability and reliability of the models used. The proposed method is fast and nondestructive, and provides a novel, efficient, and environmentally-friendly approach for the rapid determination of the active components in crude and processed traditional Chinese herbal medicines.