Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex NT Analyst Format Supported in ACD/MS Manager 4.5 and above

ACD/Labs continues its mandate to support a wide variety of third-party interconnectivity for its SpecManager product line. For versions 4.5 and later of the MS module of SpecManager, ACD/Labs has increased the number of formats supported to include import capability for LC/MS datasets from Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex (formerly PE SCIEX).

The Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX Analyst software, designed for data acquisition and quantitative data processing, now offers a "transfer" function that will automatically pass data to the MS module of ACD/SpecManager.

Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX has provided a "Send to ACD/SpecManager.dll" file which is used to send the active Analyst spectrum to the ACD/SpecManager application. Click here to download the Analyst extension.

Once the script is installed (see below), select it from the Script menu to send the current spectrum directly to the MS module of SpecManager. The spectrum is sent "as-is" including any data processing such as centroiding or smoothing which has been applied to it in Analyst. It is not currently possible to send more than one spectrum at once.

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The very first time the script is run, it will prompt for the location of SpecManager - select SpecMan.exe from the resulting Open dialog box; for subsequent runs, this location will be remembered. If the wrong application is accidentally selected, holding the control key while selecting the script will cause it to ask again for the location of SpecManager.

To install the script, copy the file "Send to ACD/SpecManager.dll" to the "Processing Scripts" subdirectory of the "API Instrument" project. Usually this directory is located at "C:\PE SCIEX Data"; however it may have been placed in a different drive or location when Analyst was installed.

Once the script has been copied and Analyst re-started, there will be a new item under the "Script" menu which will be the filename of the script.

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It is now possible to transfer entire LC/MS runs from Analyst to MS Manager. Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex has indicated that NetCDF output (importable to MS Manager 4.5 or higher) will soon be supported by Analyst. ACD/Labs has also committed to making use of Analyst COM objects for direct import of their format.