Classification of Organophosphorus Compound Infrared Spectra by Pattern Recognition Techniques

Infrared spectra of organophosphorus compounds, including pesticides and a set of neurotoxins which have been banned from use by international agreement, along with their precursors and hydrolysis products, were obtained from a variety of sources. The data were treated to minimize spectral information related to the spectral origin. A common spectral wavelength range was selected and spectral data within this range were transduced into data vectors. Computer-assisted classification tools were used to classify the spectra as pesticides versus neurotoxins and their precursors and hydrolysis products. The performance of a k-nearest neighbor classifier for this distinction is compared with several artificial neural network classifiers.