Present and Future Applications of High Resolution Mass Spectrometry in the Clinic

High resolution mass spectrometers have directly enabled clinical applications of high clinical utility. These types of mass spectrometers are less known to the general public than their low resolution counterparts and are often ascribed to proteomics or biomarker discovery. This perception is rapidly changing as high resolution mass spectrometers see impact in the areas of clinical toxicology, forensic toxicology, microbiology, and molecular diagnostics as routine analyzers. Applications in these areas are made possible by the unique capacity of high resolution mass spectrometers, typically time-of flight or Orbitrap instruments, to characterize analytical species with sufficient mass resolution to better resolve molecular composition than lower resolution analyzers. This capacity confers a unique source of analytical specificity. In the future, this analytical specificity will likely be well applied to other clinical applications: mass spectrometry based tissue imaging, intraoperative determination of tumor boundaries, and evaluation of metabolic flux.