Quality evaluation based on color grading: quality discrimination of the Chinese medicine Corni Fructus by an E-eye

‘Quality evaluation based on color grading’ is one of the features used in Chinese medicine discrimination. In order to assess the feasibility of electronic eye (E-eye) in implementing ‘quality evaluation based on color grading’, the present study applied an IRIS VA400 E-eye to test 58 batches of Corni Fructus samples. Their optical data were acquired and combined with their corresponding classes. A total of four quality discrimination models were produced according to discrimination analysis (DA), least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM), partial least squares-discrimination analysis (PLS-DA), and principal component analysis-discrimination analysis (PCA-DA). The accuracy rate of the aforementioned 4 cross evaluation models were 86.21%, 89.66%, 81.03% and 91.38%, respectively. Therefore, the PCA-DA method was used to build the final discrimination model for classifying Corni Fructus or discriminating its quality.