AIM To detect chemical components of the volatile oil of Rhizoma atractylodis . METHODS Volatile components were analyze by use of GC/MS, heuristic evolving latent projections (HELP) resolution and overall volume integration methods. RESULTS HELP method along with the data from GC/MS can conduct the peak purity examination and resolution of overlapping peaks to obtain pure chromatogram and MS spectrum of each component. Ninty two components were separated and fifty eight of them were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed, representing about 80 28% of the total content. CONCLUSION The resolved pure chromatogram and MS spectra can greatly enhance the reliability of similar searches in the MS database and thus contribute to the accuracy of the qualitative and quantitative analysis of components.
