Machine learning for smell: Ordinal odor strength prediction of molecular perfumery components

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Fichtelmann, Peter, Westermayr, Julia
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Fichtelmann, Peter
Westermayr, Julia
author_facet Fichtelmann, Peter
Westermayr, Julia
contents Predicting olfactory perception directly from molecular structure is central to fragrance design that plays a role in a wide range of industries, such as perfumery, food and beverage, and health care. Among olfactory attributes, odor strength is a key factor in shaping odor perception, but its modeling has been impeded by scarce and fragmented intensity data. In this work, we introduce an ordinal odor strength data set of over 2,000 molecules by integrating two different public sources, mapping structures to odorless, low, medium, and high categories. Across several molecular encodings and supervised learning algorithms we compared different prediction strategies. Dimensionality reduction and SHAP analysis identifies molecular size, polarity, ring features, and branching as primary drivers, consistent with mass-transport constraints on volatility, sorption, and receptor access. This scalable ordinal framework enables reliable odor-strength estimation for novel molecules and provides a foundation for in silico fragrance design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_08683
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Machine learning for smell: Ordinal odor strength prediction of molecular perfumery components
Fichtelmann, Peter
Westermayr, Julia
Chemical Physics
Predicting olfactory perception directly from molecular structure is central to fragrance design that plays a role in a wide range of industries, such as perfumery, food and beverage, and health care. Among olfactory attributes, odor strength is a key factor in shaping odor perception, but its modeling has been impeded by scarce and fragmented intensity data. In this work, we introduce an ordinal odor strength data set of over 2,000 molecules by integrating two different public sources, mapping structures to odorless, low, medium, and high categories. Across several molecular encodings and supervised learning algorithms we compared different prediction strategies. Dimensionality reduction and SHAP analysis identifies molecular size, polarity, ring features, and branching as primary drivers, consistent with mass-transport constraints on volatility, sorption, and receptor access. This scalable ordinal framework enables reliable odor-strength estimation for novel molecules and provides a foundation for in silico fragrance design.
title Machine learning for smell: Ordinal odor strength prediction of molecular perfumery components
topic Chemical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08683