LC-Inspector: a simple open-source viewer for targeted hyphenated mass spectrometry analysis

Abstract

The ubiquitousness of hyphenated mass spectrometry techniques across life sciences has made researchers around the world aware of their analytical power. However, the analysis of high-complexity mass spectrometry data remains virtually impossible for non-specialists. LC-Inspector is a standalone graphical user interface application for straightforward analysis of targeted mass spectrometry data, distributed under the MIT license and available free of charge for Windows and MacOS. The user can upload and process the data entirely locally on their machine by specifying the desired mass-to-charge ratios of the targeted compound ions and simply clicking "Process". It allows for the processing of multiple files simultaneously, freely modifying and exporting graphs in real time, and calculating compound concentrations based on calibration standards. We show the versatility and applicability of LC-Inspector to different kinds of mass spectrometry data by analyzing a series of publicly available datasets from various samples recorded on instruments from multiple vendors and by different research teams.