AMDIS in the Chemical Weapons Convention

AMDIS (Automatic Mass spectral Deconvolution and Identification System), a method of automatically finding all of the distinct chemical components in the GC/MS data file and then compare them to a library of spectra of chemicals relevant to the CWC was developed. The overall method of AMDIS can be characterized as four steps. Characterization of noise, perception of the component, deconvolution of the component spectrum, and comparison of the spectrum and retention data with a target library. The noise factor is calculated from the GC/MS data directly. Segments of the data file that do not show the characteristics of a signal are examined and a value of noise factor is found for the dataset. In complex chromatograms, the individual component is interfered with by nearby partially overlapping components. The open format of the output of the AMDIS deconvolution and library matching has made it possible for a number of other tools to be developed that extend the utility of AMDIS for these more complex environments.