Rapid deconvolution of low-resolution time-of-flight data using Bayesian inference

The deconvolution of low-resolution time-of-flight data has numerous advantages, including the ability to extract additional information from the experimental data. We augment the well-known Lucy-Richardson deconvolution algorithm using various Bayesian prior distributions and show that a prior of second-differences of the signal outperforms the standard Lucy-Richardson algorithm, accelerating the rate of convergence by more than a factor of four, while preserving the peak amplitude ratios of a similar fraction of the total peaks. A novel stopping criterion and boosting mechanism are implemented to ensure that these methods converge to a similar final entropy and local minima are avoided. Improvement by a factor of two in mass resolution allows more accurate quantification of the spectra. The general method is demonstrated in this paper through the deconvolution of fragmentation peaks of the 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid matrix and the benzyltriphenylphosphonium thermometer ion, following femtosecond ultraviolet laser desorption.