Patent ID: 8323575

Claim:
A method for analyzing a chemical sample, comprising: receiving, from a chemical analysis of the sample, data points each uniquely identified by a value pair of a retention-time and a m/z ratio and having an ion-intensity value; compressing the received data points with preservation of substantially all data provided by the data points; storing the compressed data points in a first memory; generating, from the stored compressed data points, a plurality of nested data arrays, each array having a linearly graded time axis and a non-linearly graded mass axis, wherein each of the plurality of nested data arrays represents a portion of the data points at a different resolution level, a first of said plurality of nested data arrays at a first distance from a visualization viewpoint having a level of resolution providing more detail and greater density of data than a second of said plurality of nested data arrays at a second distance from the visualization viewpoint, said second distance being greater than the first distance; storing the plurality of nested data arrays in the first memory or in a second memory; rendering, in response to the visualization viewpoint, a current image from the stored plurality of nested data arrays; and displaying the rendered current image.