A novel method to handle Rayleigh scattering in three-way excitation-emission fluorescence data

Rayleigh scattering, which is often contained in excitation-emission fluorescence data, does not conform to a trilinear structure and its existence can complicate decomposition using second-order calibration methods. In this paper, a novel method, two-direction resection PARAFAC (TDR-PARAFAC) is proposed to deal with three-way fluorescence data including Rayleigh scattering. This is a convenient method where only two parameters, i.e. the scattering regions and the number of components, are required. A simulated data set was employed to demonstrate the reasonability of the new method. It was successfully used to analyze two experimental data sets in which interferents and significant Rayleigh scattering were present. The performance of the new method was compared by inserting missing values within PARAFAC (IMV-PARAFAC). The final results suggest that TDR-PARAFAC can not only obtain more stable and satisfactory resolution than IMV-PARAFAC, but also that it speeds up the analysis. In addition, the new method can be applied to other interferences such as Rayleigh scattering, which appear in the same position in each sample matrix.