GC IMAGE - GC Image GCxGC Edition - User Guide 2024R2

New Features and Improvements in Version 2.8

GC Image GCxGC Edition 2.8 has many new features and improvements. See the GC Image GCxGC Edition User Guide for full documentation.

What's New in Version 2.8 Release 3 (February 2019)

New Improvements for Ion Peak Detection

Version 2.8R3 has the following new improvements for Processing > Extract Ion Peaks as Area Objects:

Check for existing ion peak areas before detection. The program will ask a user to delete existing areas before detection. If the user chooses not to delete them, the program will delete an existing ion peak area automatically if an exact duplicate is detected.
Supporting Gaussian or Savitzky-Golay smoothing for both Column I and II;
New Mass Range filter that allows a user to specify one or more mass ranges (e.g. "41, 52.5-56.5");
New Perform Library Search for Extracted Ion Areas option that turns on library search with the deconvolved spectra of extracted ion peak areas automatically;
Additional ion peak attributes stored as custom attributes of the extracted ion peak areas including: Peak 1, Peak 2, RT1, RT2, Peak Width, Peak Value, and Qualifier Count. They can be added to Blob Table through CLIC columns using CLIC function CUSTOMATTRIBUTE("Attribute Name").
The detection parameters are now recorded in Journal.

New Improvements for Peak Review

Version 2.8R3 has new improvements for Review mode including:

All views are updated to display information of the currently selected blob or area upon start review.
During review, a blob or an area can be selected in Image View directly to review its information. The selection action updates all views including 1D View, SIC, Spectrum View, and Blob/Area Table selection automatically.

New Improvements for Library Search

Version 2.8R3 now includes replib from NIST Library in addition to mainlib by default, in order to improve the accuracy of the search results for common compounds.

In addition, Blob Table now has columns for accessing the top three hit list entries returned by Library Search including:

Hit Name — Compound Name of the hit at the specified rank
Hit Formula — Chemical Formula of the hit at the specified rank
Hit Molecular Weight — Molecular Weight of the hit at the specified rank
Hit Base Peak — Base Peak of the hit at the specified rank
Hit CAS# — CAS Number of the hit at the specified rank
Hit RI — RI of the hit at the specified rank
Hit Match Factor — Match Factor of the hit at the specified rank
Hit Reverse Match Factor — Reverse Match Factor of the hit at the specified rank
Hit Probability — Probability of the hit at the specified rank

Additional hit list entries can be added to Blob Table as CLIC columns, for example, "Hit_Name[5]" or "Hit_Match_Factor[5]".

New Improvements for Investigator

Version 2.8R3 has new features for Investigator, including:

%RSD (RSD in percents) added to computed statistics in addition to absolute RSD.
New Analysis menu that replaces the configuration button for selecting computed statistics and provides preset configurations of commonly used statistics including Means, Overall Descriptive Statistics, Pairwise Differences, and Multi-Class Statistics.

Other New Improvements

Version 2.8R3 has other new and improved operations, including:

Import Image now imports the known method parameters from JEOL AccuTOF GCx profile or centroid data files acquired by the JEOL MsAxel program. The imported method parameters can be accessed through Image Attributes - Miscellaneous tab or Summary Report - Image Attributes report.
Three new CLIC functions, MassRank2, Match2, and RMatch2, are added to support matching Reference MS with other spectra.

What's New in Version 2.8 Release 2 (November 2018)

New Support of Pulse Calibration with Centroid Data

Version 2.8R2 now supports pulse calibration for either centroid or profile data.

New and Improved Support of Custom Attributes for Peak and Sample

Custom attributes can now be specified in the Description field of a blob or an area using the JSON formatted name-value pairs. A new CUSTOMATTRIBUTE("Attribute Name") CLIC function can be used to retrieve custom attribute values to be used in Blob Table for calculation and reporting.

Template - Import Compound List is enhanced to import both built-in and custom attributes from external sources including:

Support importing Group Name and Reference MS fields;
Support importing Retention I and Retention II in either Minutes, Seconds, or Pixels;
Support importing multiple custom attributes to the Description field.

Also, custom attributes for a sample can be added to a Sequence Table in a project, and automatically imported into Image Attributes during auto processing. A new MISCIMAGEATTRIBUTE("Attribute Name") CLIC function can be used to retrieve custom attribute values from the Image Attributes - Miscellaneous table to be used in Blob Table for calculation and reporting.

Improved Matching and Alignment Support

Version 2.8R2 has new improvements for template matching and raw data alignment including:

Register Image has a new option that allows re-detecting blobs that match the pre-registration blobs automatically.
Template - Interactive Match and Transform now supports all transform types including custom transform plug-ins.
Template Object Table has a new Show Selected Only option. When the option is selected, only selected template object(s) will be displayed so that a user can more easily review and edit specific template object(s), such as a compound group polygon in a complex template.

Improved Support of Project Workspace

GC Image program now has a new workspace mode if invoked from GC Project program. When Project launches an Image window instance with an open project, it will set the Image window instance to use default paths of the project for import, open, configuration, template, and report functions so that a user can maintain all files related to a project together and switch from one project to another easily.

Other New Improvements

Version 2.8R2 has other new and improved operations, including:

The software now automatically detects the missing MSFileReader dependency and notifies users when importing Thermo Raw files.
The Find Blob tool now stays open and allows searching blobs continuously until it is closed by the user.
Investigator now shows the path of the open analysis file in its window title.

What's New in Version 2.8 Release 1 (July 2018)

New and Improved I/O Support

GC Image GCxGC Edition 2.8r1 has new and improved I/O facilities, including:

The new MassHunter DAC B.08 that provides supports for the new compression format for profile data, and IMS data.
Improved support for the GCD files acquired by the new Shimadzu LabSolution software (The support is experimental and limited to GC data).
The updated VUV plugin that supports data acquired by a VGA 101 system.
The software now automatically detects the missing Microsoft Visual C++ runtime dependencies and notifies users for MassHunter and Waters Raw data readers.

New and Improved Ion Peak Detection

The new Processing > Extract Ion Peaks as Area Objects replaces the Extract Ion Peaks to Areas plugin included in the previous versions. The new function includes several major improvements:

A completely new algorithm that implements a processing workflow similar to AMDIS with spectral deconvolution.
A new implementation that is much faster and uses less memory.
Extracted ion peaks with their characteristic ions and deconvolved spectra can be easily reviewed and identified through the Review Spectrum view of the Review Mode.

New Side-by-Side Image Comparison Tool

The new Compare Images - Side-by-Side tool adapts the reliable peak region alignment methods from Investigator, enables comprehensive peak matching between two chromatograms, and automates difference detection. The tool provides a set of visualizations that allow users to interactively review two chromatograms, the alignment transformation, and peak matches. It provides not only comparative visualization, but also comprehensive characterization of sample differences down to individual peaks.

New Investigator Tool for Finding Common and Unique Compounds

The new Compound Finder tool in Investigator allows analysts to detect common and unique compounds across many samples with specialized detection and identification constraints that use chromatographic and mass spectral information to distinguish marker compounds. In addition, the results are visualized with a labeled bubble plot, which provides not only metric values, but also instructive predictions as to which features are effective for distinguishing samples.

New Investigator ML™ Plugin

The new Investigator ML is a plugin tool for supervised pattern recognition and classification. An experimental version of Investigator ML is included with GC Image GCxGC Edition Version 2.8. Investigator ML can be launched from the Investigator menu as Tools > Investigator ML. Then, from the dialog, shown below, the user selects the:

Feature type, either blobs or areas;
Attribute for pattern recognition, e.g., Percent Response;
Classes for training and classification; and
Chromatograms to provide feature data.

In the current version, Investigator ML supports only supervised binary classification, so only two classes can be selected and only chromatograms from those classes are available for selection as sources of the feature data. Investigator ML has a separate Users' Manual that describes its operations and use. This is available via the Help menu in the Investigator ML interface.

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