Combination of near-infrared spectroscopy with Wasserstein generative adversarial networks for rapidly detecting raw material quality for formula products

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has emerged as a key technique for rapid quality detection owing to its fast, non-destructive, and eco-friendly characteristics. However, its practical implementation within the formulation industry is challenging owing to insufficient data, which renders model fitting difficult. The complexity of acquiring spectra and spectral reference values results in limited spectral data, aggravating the problem of low generalization, which diminishes model performance. To address this problem, we introduce what we believe to be a novel approach combining NIRS with Wasserstein generative adversarial networks (WGANs). Specifically, spectral data are collected from representative samples of raw material provided by a formula enterprise. Then, the WGAN augments the database by generating synthetic data resembling the raw spectral data. Finally, we establish various prediction models using the PLSR, SVR, LightGBM, and XGBoost algorithms. Experimental results show the NIRS-WGAN method significantly improves the performance of prediction models, with R2 and RMSE of 0.949 and 1.415 for the chemical components of sugar, respectively, and 0.922 and 0.243 for nicotine. The proposed framework effectively enhances the predictive capabilities of various models, addressing the issue caused by limited training data in NIRS prediction tasks.