GC Image Users' Guide

New Features and Improvements in Release 2.1

GC Image Release 2.1 (March 2010) has many new features and improvements. See the GC Image Users' Guide for full documentation.

High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

GC Image R2.1 introduces a new version for high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). This version supports:

Viewing profile spectra in the more powerful MS Viewer.
A Mass Calibration tool for quickly implementing local mass calibration based on chromatographic peaks across the chromatogram. The Mass Calibration tool offers several alternative calibration functions and maintains user-managed archives of chromatographic peak sets and calibrant ion peaks.
A Formula Calculator for computing possible elemental compositions for selected HRMS peaks. The Formula Calculator supports flexible constraints on constituent elements (including isotopes) and numbers of atoms. Also included is a Formula-to-Mass Calculator with isotopes and abundances.
Graphical overlay in the MS Viewer of isotopic patterns generated by the Formula Calculator.

New and Improved MS Viewing and Operations

GC Image R2.1 has significant improvements for MS data analysis.

The MS Viewer now supports:

Displaying and comparing multiple spectra in one window with three new layouts: Overlaid, Head-to-Tail, and Difference.
Displaying spectra from the hit-list returned by library search and pushing library search hit-lists to blob metadata.
Improved scrolling over the spectral range and enhanced zooming control.
Control of the color and visibility for each spectrum.
Arithmetic operations to add and subtract spectra.
Scalar operations on spectra for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Copying a spectrum to the clipboard as a table or string (full range or selected range) and copying the MS graph as an image.

GC Image R2.1 introduces a Batch Mode for library search with search performance up to ten times faster than Interactive Mode.

New Tools for Graphics and Meshes

GC Image R2.1 introduces several new and improved features for editing graphics and meshes.

Multiple vertices of a graphic object can be dragged in unison in the Edit Vertices mode.
Vertices of a graphic object can be dragged in strictly vertical or horizontal directions with the shift key.
The new Auto Mesh tool allows automation of vertical or horizontal mesh divisions (a) uniformly, (b) based on linear retention-time indices, or (c) based on selected blobs or blob sets.
The new Polyline Auto Split tool can automatically find gaps (paths of smaller intensity values) to split a graphic object.

New and Improved Reporting

GC Image R2.1 introduces new user controls for customizing summary reports and other reports.

The Blob Set Table allows user control of which columns are included and the order in which the included columns are listed.

The Summary Report now supports:

Saving and reusing multiple Summary Report configurations.
Reporting in Microsoft Excel file format (.xls).
User control over the region, size, and orientation of the Image Viewer subreport.
A simpler mechanism for including a user-selected logo.
User-supplied comments.
User control over the inclusion and order of metadata in the Image Attributes subreport.
Inclusion of an external, user-generated CSV file as a table.

Image Investigator™

GC Image R2.1 introduces a new interface, Image Investigator™, which allows users to analyze multiple chromatograms interactively. Image Investigator allows users to compare chromatograms, blobs, areas, and blob sets from a set of chromatograms, and examine the statistical characteristics and trends. In later releases, Image Investigator will be enhanced with capabilities for clustering, classification, and fingerprinting. The existing Image Comparison tool, which supports pairwise chromatographic comparisons, also is included in GC Image R2.1.

Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

GC Image R2.1 has several improvements for qualitative and quantitative analysis.

A Reference Peak can be assigned to a blob to provide additional statistics for quality control, including retention-time differences, resolutions, and volume ratio.
The Blob Set Table reports on the residual set that consists of all blobs not included in any blob set.
The Area Table reports on the residual area that consists of all regions not inside any area.
Linear retention index (LRI) calibration allows users to set LRI values at the limits of the chromatogram and supports extrapolation.
The Slice Report now supports multiple calibration functions defined for different regions in a single chromatogram.
Users can choose among the total blob volume, area volume, and image volume as the total response for calculating the percent response for blobs and areas.
Users can specify the unit of measurement for calibrated amounts included in reports.

New and Improved Visualization

In GC Image R2.1, the Image Viewer provides several new visualization features.

Auto Text allows users to select image attributes (such as source file, sampling rate, modulation period, or user-defined fields) to be displayed as a text object on the image.
Users can add a legend with user-defined metadata.
Users can display an optional colorization legend.
Users can specify labels for the Column and Column II axes, as well as for the intensity axis shown in the 3D Viewer.

New and Improved I/O Support

GC Image R2.1 has new and improved I/O facilities.

Export Image has user controls for the region, size, and orientation of exported pictures.
Export Image allows users to export an image into a one dimensional or two dimensional CSV file.
Export Image allows users to export the spectra of selected blobs into a text MS file.
Additional metadata fields are imported from Agilent Chemstation data files, including instrument model and sample name.
Users can add custom metadata fields to the Image Attributes.

Other New and Improved Operations

GC Image R2.1 has many other improvements, including:

Included Graphics and Areas have a new Close flag that can be used to prevent double counting for polygons inside other polygons.
The Compound Library now supports chemical name and formula searches.
The Compound Library allows users to export all or selected compounds to and import compounds from CSV files.
The Compound Library has a Description field.
Blob, Area, Graphic objects and Blob Sets have a new Description field that can be loaded automatically from the Compound Library (if available) with Auto Fill.
The software is enhanced to support importation of Sequence Tables with a flexible CSV Importer.
The software allows Auto Process of linked runs from a data path specified in Sequence Table.
The software allows users to create and manage additional folders in a project.
The software provides an option to automatically set the color maps of imported images to use Default, Automatic, Linear, Logarithmic or Exponential value mapping.

The people of GC Image welcome your suggestions of new features, your comments about existing features and documentation, and reports of any problems. We strive to make GC Image meet the needs of our users in their many varied applications.

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