Haystack

Haystack is a web-based software tool designed to visualize, parse, filter, and extract significant features from liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LCMS) datasets rapidly and efficiently. The tool offers users a range of data visualization options and supports non-biased differential profiling studies through a unique and flexible binning function that provides an alternative to conventional peak deconvolution analysis methods. The core function of Haystack is a flexible binning procedure that converts the mass dimension of the chromatogram into a set of interval variables that can uniquely identify a sample. The validity of this approach is demonstrated by comparison of a dataset from plants grown at two light conditions with manual and automated peak detection methods. Haystack successfully predicted class assignment based on principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis, and identified discriminatory features based on analysis of extracted ion chromatograms (EICs) of significant bins.