Patent ID: 7684934

Claim:
A method of detecting the presence of an analyte in a sample by mass spectrometry, wherein the mass spectrometry comprises Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization (MALDI), said method comprising: (a) subjecting the sample to MALDI to generate sets of peaks of a mass spectrum of said sample; (b) combining data, including peak height data of peaks within the sets of peaks of the mass spectrum of said sample, said peaks representing: different charge states of a molecular fragment of a component of said sample, different adducts of a molecular fragment of a component of said sample, water loss of a molecular fragment of a component of said sample, different solvent interaction products of a molecular fragment of a component of said sample, or different isotopes from a molecular fragment of a component of said sample; and (c) comparing said data so combined to a library of deconvoluted reference mass spectral data representative of analytes of known identity, to thereby detect the presence in said sample of one of the analyte of said reference set.