Phase Correction for Absorption Mode Two-Dimensional Mass Spectrometry.

Two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2D MS) is a tandem mass spectrometry method that relies on manipulating ion motions to correlate precursor and fragment ion signals. 2D mass spectra are obtained by performing a Fourier transform in both the precursor ion mass-to-charge ratio () dimension and the fragment ion dimension. The phase of the ion signals evolves linearly in the precursor dimension and quadratically in the fragment dimension. This study demonstrates that phase-corrected absorption mode 2D mass spectrometry improves signal-to-noise ratios by a factor of 2 and resolving power by a factor of 2 in each dimension compared to magnitude mode. Furthermore, phase correction leads to an easier differentiation between ion signals and artefacts, and therefore easier data interpretation.