OpenChrom: a cross-platform open source software for the mass spectrometric analysis of chromatographic data

This work describes a native approach to handle chromatographic data files. The approach can be extended in its functionality such as facilities to detect baselines, to detect, integrate and identify peaks and to compare mass spectra, as well as the ability to internationalize the application. Additionally, filters can be applied on the chromatographic data to enhance its quality, for example to remove background and noise. Extended operations like do, undo and redo are supported.OpenChrom is a software application to edit and analyze mass spectrometric chromatographic data. It is extensible in many different ways, depending on the demands of the users or the analytical procedures and algorithms. It offers a customizable graphical user interface. The software is independent of the operating system, due to the fact that the Rich Client Platform is written in Java. OpenChrom is released under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 (EPL). There are no license constraints regarding extensions. They can be published using open source as well as proprietary licenses. OpenChrom is available free of charge at http://www.openchrom.net webcite.Software has become an integral part of analysis techniques. Especially in the area of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, automatic samplers enable high throughput analyses. Software assists handling large amounts of data generated by automated and fast operating analytical instruments. Modern computer systems are inexpensive, powerful and allow analysis techniques that could not have been applied in the past. Deconvolution, a chromatographic quality enhancing technique, demonstrates for instance that increasing processor power makes new analysis techniques applicable. The technique of deconvolution has been described by Biller and Biemann [1,2], Dromey et al. [3], Colby [4], Hindmarch et al. [5], Halket et al. [6], Kong et al. [7], Taylor et al. [8], Pool et al. [9,10] and Davies [11] in various ways. Stein [12] published an enhanced deconv