Acknowledgements.

Introduction.

1 What Instrumental Approaches are Available.

1.1 Ion Sources.

1.1.1 Electron Ionization.

1.1.2 Chemical Ionization.

1.1.3 Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization.

1.1.4 Electrospray Ionization.

1.1.5 Atmospheric Pressure Photoionization.

1.1.6 Matrix-assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization.

1.2 Mass Analysers.

1.2.1 Mass Resolution.

1.2.2 Sector Analysers.

1.2.3 Quadrupole Analysers.

1.2.4 Time-of-flight.

1.3 GC/MS.

1.3.1 Total Ion Current (TIC) Chromatogram.

1.3.2 Reconstructed Ion Chromatogram (RIC).

1.3.3 Multiple Ion Detection (MID).

1.4 LC/MS.

1.5 MS/MS.

1.5.1 MS/MS by Double Focusing Instruments.

1.5.2 MS/MS by Triple Quadrupoles.

1.5.3 MS/MS by Ion Traps.

1.5.4 MS/MS by Q-TOF.

References.

2 How to Design a Quantitative Analysis.

2.1 General Strategy.

2.1.1 Project.

2.1.2 Sampling.

2.1.3 Sample Treatment.

2.1.4 Instrumental Analysis.

2.1.5 Method Validation.

References.

3 How to Improve Specificity.

3.1 Choice of a Suitable Chromatographic Procedure.

3.1.1 GC/MS Measurements in Low and High Resolution Conditions.

3.1.2 LC/ESI/MS and LC/APCI/MS Measurements.

3.2 Choice of a Suitable Ionization Method.

3.3 An Example of High Specificity and Selectivity Methods: The Dioxin Analysis.

3.3.1 Use of High Resolution MID Analysis.

3.3.2 NICI in the Analysis of Dioxins, Furans and PCBs.

3.3.3 MS/MS in the Detection of Dioxins, Furans and PCBs.

3.4 An Example of MALDI/MS in Quantitative Analysis of Polypeptides: Substance P.

References.

4 Some Thoughts on Calibration and Data Analysis.

4.1 Calibration Designs.

4.2 Homoscedastic and Heteroscedastic Data.

4.2.1 Variance Model.

4.3 Calibration Models.

4.3.1 Unweighted Regression.

4.3.2 Weighted Regression.

4.3.3 A Practical Example.

4.4 Different Approaches to Estimate Detection and Quantification Limits.

References.

Index.