OpenChrom supports only the analysis and representation of chromatographic and mass spectrometric data. It has no capabilities for data acquisition or control of vendor hardware. OpenChrom is built on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP), hence it is available for various operating systems, e.g. Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux. It is distributed under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 (EPL). Third-party libraries are separated into single bundles and are released under various OSI compatible licenses.
History
ChemClipse version 0.7.0
OpenChrom was developed by Philip Wenig as part of his PhD thesis at the University of Hamburg, Germany.[5] The focus of the thesis was to apply pattern recognition techniques on datasets recorded by analytical pyrolysis coupled with chromatography and mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS).[6][7]
OpenChrom won the Thomas Krenn Open Source Award 2010[8] as well as the Eclipse Community Award 2011.[9] The developers are also founding members of the Eclipse Science Working Group.[10] After successful commercialization of contract development and services around the OpenChrom project, vendor Lablicate reinforced the commitment to Free/Libre/Open-Source Software with the release of ChemClipse in October 2016, which serves as the base for all OpenChrom products.[11]
Supported data formats
Each system vendor stores the recorded analysis data in its own proprietary format. That makes it difficult to compare data sets from different systems and vendors. Furthermore, it's a big drawback for interlaboratory tests. The aim of OpenChrom is to support a wide range of different mass spectrometry data formats natively.[12] OpenChrom takes care that the raw data files can't be modified according to the good laboratory practice. To help scientists OpenChrom supports several open formats to import and export the analysis results. In addition, OpenChrom offers its own open source format (*.ocb) that makes it possible to save the edited chromatogram as well as the peaks and identification results.
^OpenChrom: a cross-platform open source software for the mass spectrometric analysis of chromatographic data, Philip Wenig, Juergen Odermatt, BMC Bioinformatics; 2010; doi:10.1186/1471-2105-11-405
^Softwarebasierte Verfahren zur datenbankgestützten Identifizierung organischer Substanzen mittels analytischer Pyrolyse gekoppelt mit Gaschromatographie/Massenspektrometrie (Py-GC/MS), Philip Wenig, Dissertation; 2012; DNB-IDN1027167683
