COMPARISON OF THREE WEIGHING METHODS FOR EVALUATION OF THE HPLC FINGERPRINTS OF <i>CORTEX FRAXINI</i>

Abstract

Three weighing methodological approaches, including Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC), and synthetic method (AHP combined with CRITIC), were proposed to handle the relative importance of different constituents in the HPLC fingerprints of cortex fraxini. The consistency and rationale of the three methods have been analyzed and compared. Results showed satisfying consistency in all three methods; the synthetic method reflected both the analyst's subjective judgments and the objective data itself and was, therefore, more representative than either of the other two methods alone. We conclude that the synthetic method is a reliable and appropriate method to evaluate the HPLC fingerprint of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).