A History of Breath Analysis with GC- and GCxGC-TOFMS

Employing breath for medical diagnosis has been around almost as long as human civilisation but it is only in recent decades that a scientific field of study has emerged and rapidly expanded, assisted by innovative instrumentation.

The development of fast time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS) in the late 1990s and the advances that followed greatly improved untargeted analysis and allowed comprehensive gas chromatography (GCxGC) spectra to be deconvoluted enabling extensive analyses of complex matrices such as exhaled breath.

Further innovations with high resolution also coupled with GCxGC have increased accuracy and confidence in analyte identifications. There is now a vastly improved portfolio of instrumentation available to the discerning breath researcher.

Here, we present a brief history of how breath analysis research has developed with a particular emphasis on the importance of how the use of GCxGC, TOF-MS and HR-TOF-MS have been used to generate higher quality data sets, giving increased accuracy and confidence in analyte identifications and, therefore, the overall diagnostic dentifications obtained.

By viewing this presentation you will learn more about:

• The history of breath analysis
• Innovations in GC and GCxGC TOFMS.