Patent ID: 8871525

Claim:
A method of quantitating isotopomers of a hydrogen-containing compound, comprising the steps of: a) creating a calibration table of ratio of masses for standard isotopomers using a mass spectrometer; b) relating in an equation the ratio of observed mass distributions of standard isotopomers to the relative amounts of each isotopomer in a sample; and c) applying the equation to the ratio of masses identified in the sample to quantitate the relative amount of each isotopomer of the hydrogen-containing compound; wherein the equation is: Y=g(X,A), wherein Y=(f m/z=(m/z)i )n, wherein f m/z=(m/z)i is the observed fractional mass spectral mass spectrum peak area for peak with mass to charge ratio m/z i and n is the total number of significant peaks in the mass spectrum; i is the number of charge to mass ratios m/z; and g(X,A) is a function that relates the measured fractional m/s peak areas to the actual isotopomer fractions in the sample; wherein A is a parameter that can be determined by fitting function g(X,A) to calibration data; and X=(f CH×Dy )m, wherein f CH×Dy is the actual fraction of a given isotopomer with x hydrogen atoms and y deuterium atoms and m is the total number of isotopomers considered.