Nontargeted diagnostic ion network analysis (NINA): A software to streamline the analytical workflow for untargeted characterization of natural medicines.

The characterization of herbal prescriptions serves as a foundation for quality control and regulation of herbal medicines. Previously, the characterization of herbal chemicals from natural medicines often relied on the analysis of signature fragment ions from the acquired tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) spectra with prior knowledge of the herbal species present in the herbal prescriptions of interest. Nevertheless, such an approach is often limited to target components, and it risks missing the critical components that we have no prior knowledge of.

Stepped collisional energy MS(All) : an analytical approach for optimal MS/MS acquisition of complex mixture with diverse physicochemical properties.

The analysis of complex mixtures is becoming increasingly important in various fields, such as nutrition, medicinal plants and metabolomics. The components contained in such complex mixtures are always characterized with diverse physiochemical properties that pose a major challenge during the optimization of various parameters using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (LC-MS). The parameter 'CE energy' that is normally set at a fixed value with a moderate range of CE spread during data-dependent acquisition (DDA) analysis, a prevalent approach for untargeted identification, often fails to generate sufficient MS/MS fragment ions for untargeted identification of components from complex mixtures.

An evidential reasoning based model for diagnosis of lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer.

Background: Lymph node metastasis (LNM) in gastric cancer is a very important prognostic factor affecting long-term survival. Currently, several common imaging techniques are used to evaluate the lymph node status. However, they are incapable of achieving both high sensitivity and specificity simultaneously.