Correlation analysis on 3D data - Introducing the alteration analysis

Two-dimensional correlation analysis (2DCOR) is a well-established method in chemometrics to extract information hidden in a series of measurements. That field is still thriving on its every possible corner, with new tests, perturbations, calculations, and samples. There is still an unexploited way, however, where 2DCOR can expand quite significantly. In every domain of analytical chemistry, the multi-dimensional measurements are more increasingly in the focus, especially in chromatography. Therefore it is a valid problem to explore how 2DCOR can handle data from 2D measurements. In this study, we give an answer to exactly that question, by introducing a novel method called alteration analysis, which can easily operate on 3D data. We show results obtained via experiments in chromatography, but as the original concept - the generalized correlation method - alteration analysis is not limited to a single analytical method, because it can be applied to any kind of data.