CRAFT (complete reduction to amplitude frequency table) – robust and time‐efficient Bayesian approach for quantitative mixture analysis by NMR

The intrinsic quantitative nature of NMR is increasingly exploited in areas ranging from complex mixture analysis (as in metabolomics and reaction monitoring) to quality assurance/control. Complex NMR spectra are more common than not, and therefore, extraction of quantitative information generally involves significant prior knowledge and/or operator interaction to characterize resonances of interest. Moreover, in most NMR‐based metabolomic experiments, the signals from metabolites are normally present as a mixture of overlapping resonances, making quantification difficult. Time‐domain Bayesian approaches have been reported to be better than conventional frequency‐domain analysis at identifying subtle changes in signal amplitude. We discuss an approach that exploits Bayesian analysis to achieve a complete reduction to amplitude frequency table (CRAFT) in an automated and time‐efficient fashion – thus converting the time‐domain FID to a frequency‐amplitude table. CRAFT uses a two‐step approach to FID analysis. First, the FID is digitally filtered and downsampled to several sub FIDs, and secondly, these sub FIDs are then modeled as sums of decaying sinusoids using the Bayesian approach. CRAFT tables can be used for further data mining of quantitative information using fingerprint chemical shifts of compounds of interest and/or statistical analysis of modulation of chemical quantity in a biological study (metabolomics) or process study (reaction monitoring) or quality assurance/control. The basic principles behind this approach as well as results to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in mixture analysis are presented. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.