Figure 1.

Flow diagram for an untargeted multiplatform metabolomics study that describes the methods for improving the coverage of the metabolome and confidence in metabolite identifications. The metabolome can be extracted from cells, tissue, or biofluids. The sample preparation protocol is either compatible for both instruments or specific to one instrument. Sample preparation is then followed by the multiplatform data collection that encompasses any combination of two or more instruments. The data collection can occur in parallel or sequentially. Data processing is subdivided into preprocessing and informative analysis steps, which includes statistics and metabolite identifications. A variety of commercial or free academic software is available for platform specific analysis of a single type of data. There are limited software packages capable of processing multiple data types.