Method to generate correlative data from various products of thermal degradation of biological specimens

In a method generating correlative data from various products, either known or unknown products, of thermal degradation of biological specimens and comprising sequential steps for each specimen of:

• (a) degrading such specimen by heating such specimen so as to cause such products of thermal degradation of such specimen to be evolved;
• (b) ionizing such products of thermal degradation of such specimen by a technique causing negligible fragmentation;
• (c) detecting ion currents corresponding to different mass-to-charge ratios among the products of thermal degradation of such specimen, and
• (d) recording such detected ion currents for such specimen;
• as improvement wherein:
• (e) each specimen is heated in an identical non-isothermal time-dependent heating sequence;
• (f) a three-dimensional array comprising a large and sufficient number of ion currents, which correspond to substantially all detectible ratios of mass-to-charge within a range at a large and sufficient number of successive instants during the respective time-dependent heating sequences, are detected and recorded for each specimen,
• wherein one dimension of each three-dimensional array represents ion currents, another dimension of such three-dimensional array represents mass-to-charge ratios, and another dimension of such three-dimensional array represents specimen temperatures as a function of process time;
• and
• (g) representative data from the three-dimensional array thus recorded for each one of such specimens are correlated to representative data from the three-dimensional array thus recorded for each other of such specimens.