Discrimination of Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae in different years using Terahertz Time-Domain spectroscopy combined with convolutional neural network

Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae (PCR) in longer storage years possess higher medicinal values, but their differentiation is difficult due to similar morphological characteristics. Therefore, this study investigated the feasibility of using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) combined with a convolutional neural network (CNN) to identify PCR samples stored from 1 to 20 years. The absorption coefficient and refractive index spectra in the range of 0.2-1.5 THz were acquired. Partial least squares discriminant analysis, random forest, least squares support vector machines, and CNN were used to establish discriminant models, showing better performance of the CNN model than the others. In addition, the output data points of the CNN intermediate layer were visualized, illustrating gradual changes in these points from overlapping to clear separation. Overall, THz-TDS combined with CNN models could realize rapid identification of different year PCRs, thus providing an efficient alternative method for PCR quality inspection.