Objective To study the differences of inorganic elements between crude and processed Polygonui Multiflori Radix by ICP-MS; To use pattern recognition to identify the two. Methods The inorganic elements in 22 batches of crude and processed Polygonui Multiflori Radix were determinated by ICP-MS, which were analyzed by PCA and OPLS-DA of Simca13.0 software. Results There were 14 common inorganic elements in the 22 batches of crude and processed Polygonui Multiflori Radix, which were Mg, K, Fe, V, Co, Mn, Ni, Sr, Rb, Ba, As, Pb, Cr and Cu. The contents of K, Fe, and Mg were abundant in the macro e...