Two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2D-LC) is one of the highest-resolution techniques available to chromatographers for the separation of analytes in complex mixtures. However, data analysis and data visualization remain challenging, especially for home-built systems that do not utilize commercial software packages. Even these packages are not capable of effectively displaying data generated from systems where multiple columns are used for the second-dimension separation. Here, an open-source software package with a graphical user interface used to plot and characterize 2D-LC data is described. In addition to plotting imported data, a 2D-LC simulator is included to generate both 1D and 2D chromatograms. The HSV (hue, saturation, value) color wheel is used to combine multiple 2D-LC contour plots into a single graphic, creating a new visualization strategy for 2D-LC systems in which multiple columns are used sequentially or in parallel column arrays in the second dimension. Use of the package for both experimental and random simulated data is presented as a demonstration of its capabilities.
Parker et al. (Sun,) studied this question.