Development of a CD-ROM of Chromatographic Images

In this project we will build a CD-ROM database containing images of highly verified chromatograms of chemicals, especially those pertinent to cancer/health research. Suitable indexing of these images will make retrieval rapid, and we will research ways to enable CD-ROM users to download these data to existing chromatogram analysis software to perform automated analyses. This CD-ROM will be designed to address 2 problems associated with research activities in chromatography: accessing appropriate and reliable chromatograms quickly and in using those reference chromatograms to make computations. In general, chromatography is a family of techniques used to separate/purify the components of chemical mixtures by taking advantage of the different transport properties of those chemicals in some medium. Applications of chromatography include analytical studies as well as purifica- tion/production. Chromatography is more like an art than a science; the choice of a "medium" and the associated conditions (temperature, pressure, column length, etc.) is usually based on precedent rather than on a calculation from first principles. However, locating reliable and complete precedents in journals is not easy. Even when one has a complete specification of precedent, an investigator must usually extrapolate from that condition to what he/she can do. The reasons for this are the mixture to be separated is somewhat different from the published case, or the separation equipment that is available is somewhat different, or because the performance required is different. This extrapolation from published cases is usually done by "eyeballing" the available chromatograms, a technique allowing room for improvement.