Genetic algorithms for wavenumber selection in forensic differentiation of paper by linear discriminant analysis

Selection of the most significant variables, i.e. the wavenumber, from an infrared (IR) spectrum is always difficult to be achieved. In this preliminary paper, the feasibility of genetic algorithms (GA) in identifying most informative wavenumbers from 150 IR spectra of papers was investigated. The list of selected wavenumbers was then employed in Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). GA procedure was repeated 30 times to get different lists of variables. Then the performances of LDA models were estimated via leave-one-out cross-validation. A total of six to eight wavenumbers were identified to be valuable variables in the GA procedures. All the 30 LDA models achieve correct classification rates between 97.3% to 100.0%. Therefore the GA-LDA model could be a suitable tool for differentiating white papers that appeared to be highly similar in their IR fingerprints.