Enhancement of Sensitivity and Resolution of Surface-Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometric Records for Serum Peptides Using Time-Series Analysis Techniques

Measurement of peptide/protein concentrations in biological samples for biomarker discovery commonly uses high-sensitivity mass spectrometers with a surface-processing procedure to concentrate the important peptides. These time-of-flight (TOF) instruments typically have low mass resolution and considerable electronic noise associated with their detectors. The net result is unnecessary overlapping of peaks, apparent mass jitter, and difficulty in distinguishing mass peaks from background noise. Many of these effects can be reduced by processing the signal using standard time-series background subtraction, calibration, and filtering techniques.