The performances of three multivariate analysis methods—partial least squares (PLS) regression, secured principal component
regression (sPCR) and modified secured principal component regression (msPCR)—are compared and tested for the determination
of human serum albumin (HSA), γ-globulin, and glucose in phosphate buffer solutions and blood glucose quantification by near-infrared
(NIR) spectroscopy. Results from the application of PLS, sPCR and msPCR are presented, showing that the three methods can
determine the concentrations of HSA, γ-globulin and glucose in phosphate buffer solutions almost equally well provided that
the prediction samples contain the same spectral information as the calibration samples. On the other hand, when some potential
spectral features appear in new measurements, sPCR and msPCR outperform PLS significantly. The reason for this is that such
spectral features are not included during calibration, which leads to a degradation in PLS prediction performance, while sPCR
and msPCR can improve their predictions for the concentrations of the analytes by removing the uncalibrated features from
the original spectra. This point is demonstrated by successfully applying sPCR and msPCR to in vivo blood glucose measurements.
This work therefore shows that sPCR and msPCR may provide possible alternatives to PLS in cases where some uncalibrated spectral
features are present in measurements used for concentration prediction.
Keywords Human serum albumin - γ-Globulin - Glucose - Secured principal component regression (sPCR) - Moving window partial least squares regression (MWPLSR)