Intelligent screening for designer drugs: A signal analysis

We are presenting an optimized intelligent screening tool built for the automated detection of amphetamines, which represent the main designer drugs found on the black market in Europe. The GC-FTIR spectra of the target compounds were preprocessed with a w² function that enhances the absorptions identified as having a high modeling and / or discrimination power. The absorptions responsible for the discrimination of amphetamines according to their biological (stimulant and / or hallucinogenic) effect were determined and interpreted. The positive effect of the w² selective amplifier on the efficiency of the detection system is highlighted by a comparative analysis based on agglomerative clustering.