Abstract
Odor sensing enables us to sense odorant stimuli. This sensation causes a deep subconscious response in humans in various ways and represents an indispensable sensation in daily life. However, unwanted compounds called fixatives, which can cause interference and contradiction in odorant analysis especially using mass spectrometry and human subject, are included in odorant samples. Moreover, we do not know the pure odorant mass spectrum. Therefore, it is essential to eliminate the interference of fixatives from the odor sample mass spectrum data and to extract the pure odor mass spectrum. In the present study, we performed independent component analysis (ICA) on the mass spectra of odor samples to remove the influence of fixatives. The advantage of the ICA in separating independent components without a priori knowledge of the original data is useful. The abundance of essential-oil mass spectra that we gathered were utilized as odorant samples. The results were compared with sensory test data from a human subject for a better study of fixative influence. It was revealed that ICA could extract the pure odor sample mass spectrum data without the influence of fixatives, even if the fixatives were added to the odor samples. This study’s outcomes allow us to analyze more odor samples for odorant analysis, not hindered by the influence of unwanted compounds.
Highlights
The interaction between an odorant and olfactory receptors leads to an odorant stimulus
CONCEPT OF PURE SAMPLE EXTRACTION We considered odor samples and fixatives as different components that can be separated through mass spectrum data analysis
Since small noise can appear in the measurement process, we applied preprocessing to the mass spectral data to eliminate the possible noise
Summary
The interaction between an odorant and olfactory receptors leads to an odorant stimulus. This sensation is one of the primary senses and is an essential sense among living organisms. It is known that humans can distinguish among up to 10,000 distinct odors with their known 400 types of olfactory receptors [4]–[6]. There are many studies about odorant analysis utilizing biomimetic odor sensing systems called e-noses. They are composed of electronic instruments that can detect, analyze, and recognize odors [7], [8]. There are some methods for odor detection and odor pattern analysis, such as
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