Exposure of antimalarial herbal drugs (AMHDs) to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) affects the potency and integrity of the AMHDs. Instant classification of the AMHDs exposed to UVR (UVR-AMHDs) from unexposed ones (Non-UVR-AMHDs) would be beneficial for public health safety, especially in warm regions. For the first time, this work combined laser-induced autofluorescence (LIAF) with chemometric techniques to classify UVR-AMHDs from Non-UVR-AMHDs. LIAF spectra data were recorded from 200 ml of each of the UVR-AMHDs and Non-UVR-AMHDs. To extract useful data from the spectra fingerprint, principal components (PCs) analysis was used. The performance of five chemometric algorithms: random forest (RF), neural network (NN), support vector machine (SVM), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and k-nearest neighbour (KNN), were compared after optimization by validation. The chemometric algorithms showed that KNN, SVM, NN, and RF were superior with a classification accuracy of 100% for UVR-AMHDs while LDA had a classification accuracy of 98.8% after standardization of the spectra data and was used as an input variable for the model. Meanwhile, a classification accuracy of 100% was obtained for KNN, LDA, SVM, and NN when the raw spectra data was used as input except for RF for which a classification accuracy of 99.9% was obtained. Classification accuracy above 99.74 ± 0.26% at 3 PCs in both the training and testing sets were obtained from the chemometric models. The results showed that the LIAF, combined with the chemometric techniques, can be used to classify UVR-AMHDs from Non-UVR-AMHDs for consumer confidence in malaria-prone regions. The technique offers a non-destructive, rapid, and viable tool for identifying UVR-AMHDs in resource-poor countries.
Keywords: Antimalarial herbal drugs; Chemometric techniques; Laser-induced autofluorescence; Ultraviolet radiation.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.