For vector A which expresses an absorption spectrum of a target component, vector F orthogonal to vector A is designated as a filter for extracting an impurity superposed on the target component on a chromatogram. For vector I which expresses a measured spectrum obtained by a chromatographic analysis performed on a sample, the inner product of vectors I and F is defined as an index value u of the amount of impurity. If an impurity is present, a peak-like waveform appears on a graph which shows a temporal change in the index value u for the measured spectrum obtained at each point in time of the measurement. By detecting this waveform, the presence or absence of the impurity can be correctly determined. The direction of vector F may be determined so that, when vector B which expresses a spectrum of the impurity is decomposed into vector Ba parallel to vector A and vector Bo orthogonal to vector A, vector F becomes nearly parallel to vector Bo (i.e. the cosine similarity index is maximized).