Synthetic generation of single-channel single particle ICP-MS time scans

Abstract

Single particle inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (sp-ICP-MS) produces time series - time scans - that require processing to extract meaningful information regarding the nanoparticles that are analysed. In this work, we present a stochastic algorithm to generate such time scans. We also introduce an open-source implementation of it, spGen, a Python library designed to generate synthetic, yet realistic sp-ICP-MS time scans for a single mass-to-charge ratio. We argue that our library is an efficient and reliable testbed on which future studies can build to assess existing or new data processing strategies.