Patent ID: 8658971

Claim:
A method of mass spectrometry comprising: providing a Time of Flight mass analyser; digitising a first signal output from an ion detector to produce a first digitised signal; detecting a first set of peaks in said first digitised signal and determining an arrival time T o and peak area S o of one or more peaks in said first set of peaks thereby forming a first list of data pairs, each data pair comprising an arrival time value and a peak area value; and filtering out, attenuating or otherwise rejecting one or more data pairs from said first list thereby forming a second reduced list, wherein a data pair is filtered out, attenuated or otherwise rejected from said first list if the peak area value of a data pair in said first list is determined to be less than a threshold peak area; wherein said step of filtering out, attenuating or otherwise rejecting one or more data pairs is performed prior to histogramming or otherwise combining mass spectral data from separate acquisitions in order to build or form a composite mass spectrum.