Quality Traceability System of Traditional Chinese Medicine Based on Two Dimensional Barcode Using Mobile Intelligent Technology

PLOS ONE, Dec 2019

Currently, the chemical fingerprint comparison and analysis is mainly based on professional equipment and software, it’s expensive and inconvenient. This study aims to integrate QR (Quick Response) code with quality data and mobile intelligent technology to develop a convenient query terminal for tracing quality in the whole industrial chain of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine). Three herbal medicines were randomly selected and their chemical two-dimensional barcode (2D) barcodes fingerprints were constructed. Smartphone application (APP) based on Android system was developed to read initial data of 2D chemical barcodes, and compared multiple fingerprints from different batches of same species or different species. It was demonstrated that there were no significant differences between original and scanned TCM chemical fingerprints. Meanwhile, different TCM chemical fingerprint QR codes could be rendered in the same coordinate and showed the differences very intuitively. To be able to distinguish the variations of chemical fingerprint more directly, linear interpolation angle cosine similarity algorithm (LIACSA) was proposed to get similarity ratio. This study showed that QR codes can be used as an effective information carrier to transfer quality data. Smartphone application can rapidly read quality information in QR codes and convert data into TCM chemical fingerprints.

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Quality Traceability System of Traditional Chinese Medicine Based on Two Dimensional Barcode Using Mobile Intelligent Technology

October Quality Traceability System of Traditional Chinese Medicine Based on Two Dimensional Barcode Using Mobile Intelligent Technology Yong Cai 0 1 2 Xiwen Li 0 2 Runmiao Wang 0 1 2 Qing Yang 0 2 Peng Li 0 1 2 Hao Hu 0 1 2 0 Funding: This research was supported by the funding of University of Macau (MYRG2016- 00055-ICMS-QRCM), Hong Kong, Macao & Taiwan Science and Technology Cooperation Project (2015DFM30030), ICMM basic research funding (ZZ2014029), and Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University , SKHL1419 1 State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, University of Macau , Macao , China , 2 Information Technology College, Beijing Normal University Zhuhai Campus , Zhuhai , China , 3 Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences , Beijing , China , 4 State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University , Chengdu , China 2 Editor: Shilin Chen, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College , CHINA Currently, the chemical fingerprint comparison and analysis is mainly based on professional equipment and software, it's expensive and inconvenient. This study aims to integrate QR (Quick Response) code with quality data and mobile intelligent technology to develop a convenient query terminal for tracing quality in the whole industrial chain of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine). Three herbal medicines were randomly selected and their chemical two-dimensional barcode (2D) barcodes fingerprints were constructed. Smartphone application (APP) based on Android system was developed to read initial data of 2D chemical barcodes, and compared multiple fingerprints from different batches of same species or different species. It was demonstrated that there were no significant differences between original and scanned TCM chemical fingerprints. Meanwhile, different TCM chemical fingerprint QR codes could be rendered in the same coordinate and showed the differences very intuitively. To be able to distinguish the variations of chemical fingerprint more directly, linear interpolation angle cosine similarity algorithm (LIACSA) was proposed to get similarity ratio. This study showed that QR codes can be used as an effective information carrier to transfer quality data. Smartphone application can rapidly read quality information - OPEN ACCESS Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper. in QR codes and convert data into TCM chemical fingerprints. Introduction The industrial chain of traditional Chinese medicine is a complicated process including multiple steps. The quality and safety issues of traditional Chinese medicine have plagued the scientists for many years. It’s necessary to ensure the quality to be safe, effective, stable and controllable in each link of the whole process, especially in production and circulation of Chinese herbal medicine which is the origin of TCM. Unfortunately almost all current traceability technologies can only provide production or sale information in circulation with no quality data. Chemical fingerprints of TCM is an important quality control models and technologies to identify the quality of traditional Chinese medicines [ 1–3 ]. The success of conversion from chemical fingerprint to two-dimensional barcode has created an opportunity to develop a traceability system delivering quality information [ 4 ]. However how to apply quality twodimensional barcode to practical quality traceability in circulation and personal consumed terminal still remains elusive. QR code has been used in traceability systems of fish [ 5 ] and also was applied to vegetable [ 6 ] traceability combined with mobile service. Currently combining smartphones power sensors and cloud computing technologies, scientists have tried to build a mobile health care system that could benefit the public [ 7–9 ]. The sensor capabilities were also used to allow smartphones to provide location based services and gathered data from camera or QR code by scanning [ 10–12 ]. Mobile intelligent technology and two-demensional code scanning provided probability to trace good quality or bad of TCM in circulation and personal consumer terminal. By the end of 2011, there were over 130 million people who used iPhone, iPad or iTouch in the world and the number increased 103% than that in 2010. According to a new report released by Gartner in the third quarter of 2013 [ 13 ], the number of customers using Samsung and Google's Android system exceeded that of people operating Apple and its iOS system. Hundreds of applications including developed games [ 14,15 ], booking [16], traveling [ 17–19 ] and payment [ 20 ] were installed in smartphone using Android system. Especially, the mobile health applications enabled the doctors to interact with the patients by “wang-wen-wen-qie” or monitor people to im (...truncated)


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Yong Cai, Xiwen Li, Runmiao Wang, Qing Yang, Peng Li, Hao Hu. Quality Traceability System of Traditional Chinese Medicine Based on Two Dimensional Barcode Using Mobile Intelligent Technology, PLOS ONE, 2016, Volume 11, Issue 10, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0165263