Neural network classification and quantification of organic vapors based on fluorescence data from a fiber optic sensor array

Computational neural networks have been developed to classify and quantify nine organic vapors. The neural network analyses used data that consisted of the change in fluorescence from a sensor array that consisted of 19 fiber optics with immobilized dye in polymer matrices. Plots of change in fluorescence intensity versus time were measured as pulses of analyte were presented to the sensor array. Descriptors were calculated from the intensity vs time plots, and they were used to build neural network models that accurately classified and quantified each of the nine analytes. Most of the data were used to train the neural networks (training set members), some were used to assist termination of training (cross validation set members), and some were used to validate the models (prediction set members). Classification rates approaching 100% were achieved for the training set data, and 90% of the members in the prediction set were correctly classified. In addition, 97% of the prediction set observations were assigned a correct relative concentration.