EEMlab: A graphical user-friendly interface for fluorimetry experiments based on the drEEM toolbox

Abstract

[EN] Fluorescence has been widely employed for the characterization of organic matter. In particular, excitation emission matrixes (EEM) provide important qualitative information on its composition. However, the application of this technique is limited by the mathematical complexity involved, which requires the use of PARAFAC for deconvolution of the EEM in their components. To overcome the numerical problem specific MATLAB toolboxes for the PARAFAC deconvolution have been implemented (e.g. drEEM). This toolbox is widely used by the scientific community but its intrinsic complexity in terms of programming knowledge makes it difficult to use. In this regard and in order to facilitate the first approximation to the PARAFAC programming problem, this paper describes and offers to the community the EEMlab software application: a graphical user-firendly interface for fluorimetry experiments based on the drEEM toolbox. The interface is developed in order to facilitate not only the intuitive use of the drEEM (no previous MATLAB knowledge is needed) but also to automate many repetitive tasks (as the data load or the modeling loop) or even to manage the different formats of files being produced by all the devices involved in the process. In order to validate the EEMlab, the same experiment documented by the drEEM is reproduced. In addition, the EEMlab is tested again with conducting a new fluorimetry experiment and the results are presented at the end of the paper. Finally to appoint a reference to the public web site pabmitor.webs.upv.es/eemlab in where all the components of the EEMlab GUI (software, tutorial and datasets) are publicly available to the readers.