Nondestructive discrimination of ivories and prediction of their specific gravity by Fourier-transform Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics

Fourier-transform (FT) Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics were used for nondestructive analysis of ivories. The discrimination of five kinds of ivories, two subspecies of African elephant, mammoth, hippopotamus, and sperm whale, was investigated, and a calibration model for predicting their specific gravity was developed. FT-Raman spectra were measured in situ for them and chemometrics analyses were carried out for the 3050–350 cm−1 region. The five kinds of ivories were clearly discriminated from each other on the scores plots of two or three principal components (PCs) obtained by principal component analysis (PCA). The loadings plot for PC 1 shows that the discrimination relies on the content ratio of organic collagenous protein and inorganic hydroxyapatite of ivories. The loadings plot for PC 2 shows that bands due to the CH3 and CH2 stretching modes of the protein also play a role in the discrimination. Using partial least squares regression (PLSR), we developed a calibration model that predicts the specific gravity of the ivories from the FT-Raman spectra. The correlation coefficient and root mean square error of cross validation (RMSECV) of this model were 0.980 and 0.024, respectively.