Data Fusion for the Prediction of Elemental Concentrations in Polymetallic Sulphide Ore Using Mid-Wave Infrared and Long-Wave Infrared Reflectance Data

The increasing availability of complex multivariate data yielded by sensor technologies permits qualitative and quantitative data analysis for material characterization. Multivariate data are hard to understand by visual inspection and intuition. Thus, data-driven models are required to derive study-specific insights from large datasets. In the present study, a partial least squares regression (PLSR) model was used for the prediction of elemental concentrations using the mineralogical techniques mid-wave infrared (MWIR) and long-wave infrared (LWIR) combined with data fusion approaches. In achieving the study objectives, the usability of the individual MWIR and LWIR datasets for the prediction of the concentration of elements in a polymetallic sulphide deposit was assessed, and the results were compared with the outputs of low- and mid-level data fusion methods. Prior to low-level data fusion implementation, data filtering techniques were applied to the MWIR and LWIR datasets. The pre-processed data were concatenated and a PLSR model was developed using the fused data. The mid-level data fusion was implemented by extracting features using principal component analysis (PCA) scores. As the models were applied to the MWIR, LWIR, and fused datasets, an improved prediction was achieved using the low-level data fusion approach. Overall, the acquired results indicate that the MWIR data can be used to reliably predict a combined Pb-Zn concentration, whereas LWIR data has a good correlation with the Fe concentration. The proposed approach could be extended for generating indicative element concentrations in polymetallic sulphide deposits in real-time using infrared reflectance data. Thus, it is beneficial in providing elemental concentration insights in mining operations.