Advances in Applications of Terahertz Technology for Identification of Traditional Chinese Medicinal Materials

The identification of traditional Chinese medicinal (TCM) materials is a crucial step in ensuring medicinal quality and safeguarding clinical efficacy. By distinguishing the authenticity, geographical origin, storage years, and adulteration of TCM materials, it is possible to control medicinal quality from the source and guarantee the stability of clinical therapeutic outcomes. Traditional methods for TCM material identification primarily include sensory empirical identification, microscopic identification, and chemical analysis. Sensory empirical identification relies heavily on the subjective experience of inspectors, lacks uniform judgment criteria and is prone to human errors. Microscopic identification can only observe the micro-morphological tissues of medicinal materials, failing to comprehensively characterize the differences in the internal active components. While chemical analysis can provide relatively accurate compositional information, it typically cumbersome sample pretreatment procedures, long detection cycles, and high costs, making it difficult to meet the current demands for rapid, large-scale screening. In the face of increasingly complex quality issues concerning TCM materials, traditional identification methods are no longer sufficient for precise quality control, and there is an urgent need to develop new and efficient identification technologies. In recent years, terahertz spectroscopy technology, as a novel non-destructive testing technology, has demonstrated unique application advantages in the research of TCM material identification. This technology requires simple sample preparation and offers fast detection speed, enabling the rapid acquisition of physicochemical characteristic information of medicinal materials and objectively characterizing their intrinsic quality. When combined with artificial intelligence and big data algorithms, it can further enhance the accuracy and efficiency of TCM material identification. This paper systematically reviews the current research progress on the application of terahertz spectroscopy in the field of TCM material identification, and provides a perspective on its future development prospects in the field of TCM quality evaluation.