ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and discusses the measures of instrument performance, the types of information that can be acquired, and the methodologies and strategies available. The discussions are with respect to both the multiple types of instruments manufactured and the various classes of compounds that can be analyzed. The range of compounds makes defining the types of data that can be obtained somewhat problematic. Therefore, small molecules are dealt with in Sections 3.2 and 3.3, while biopolymers are covered in Section 3.5, although the differentiation is somewhat artificial. For instance, the determination of accurate mass data described in Section 3.1.3 is relevant to both small molecules and the analysis of the peptides derived from proteins.
