Patent ID: 8124415

Claim:
A method comprising: obtaining a mid infrared spectral representation for each blood serum sample from a set of standard blood serum samples that are statistically representative of a target group, each blood serum sample having a known concentration of apolipoprotein-B (apoB); computing a statistical correlation between the known concentrations of apoB and intensities of spectral features manifest in respective spectral representations by supervised or unsupervised multivariate statistical analysis to identify a set of spectral features correlated with apoB concentration within the set of standard samples without making use of a pure apoB spectrum in the analysis; and using the correlated spectral features to define a test that can be applied to a test spectral representation of a test blood serum sample from a member of the target group to determine a quantity of apoB in the test blood serum sample the test comprising computer readable program instructions encoding an operation applicable to the test spectral representation to yield a number that corresponds to the apoB content of the test blood serum sample, wherein the test makes no use of the pure apoB spectrum.