Skip to content

GC-EI Feature Alignment

Description

Feature list methods → Alignment → GC aligner

This module aligns GC/EI-MS feature lists by grouping deconvoluted features based on their retention times and spectral similarities to ensure accurate alignment of features across different samples.

Tip

GC aligner requires mass spectra to be constructed prior to the alignment (using GC-EI spectral deconvolution).

A typical workflow can be constructed with the mzwizard by selecting GC-EI-MS. See this pagefor a more detailed description of the workflow.

Parameters

Feature lists

Select the feature lists to be aligned.

m/z Tolerance (scan-to-scan)

Tolerance for m/z values used for spectral similarity matching.

Retention time tolerance

Maximum allowed difference between two retention time values for them to be considered for alignment.

Weight for RT

Score for perfectly matching RT values. The RT delta is divided by the RT tolerance and scaled 0-1. The weight then multiplies this score so that higher RT delta gives a penalty. The RT weight shifts the focus on RT or spectral similarity.

Similarity

Algorithm to calculate spectral similarity between samples. Pseudo spectra from GC-EI spectral deconvolution will be compared. Usually uses the Composite cosine identity which is similar to the algorithm in NIST search for GC-EI data.

Feature list name

Name for the aligned feature list.

Original feature list

Either keep or remove the original feature lists.

Tip

The alignment is performed independtly of the representative feature. Only spectral similarity and retention time are taken into account. The final representative feature will be determined as during the alignment.

Ansgar Korf, Robin Schmid