A foundational study of fire debris interpretation using quantitative measures of chromatographic features in gasoline and the use of graphical display to demonstrate data sufficiency

The analytical process for identifying ignitable liquids is based on fundamental chemical properties; however, the current interpretation of these properties as chromatographic data relies on subjective pattern recognition techniques. The subjectivity of these pattern recognition techniques increases with the presence of complex matrix contribution. To make the fire debris interpretation process more standardized and objective, a novel method is proposed for analyzing fire debris Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC–MS) data using quantitative measures of chromatographic features of interest. These features are represented by peak height ratios observed in the Total Ion Chromatograph and Extracted Ion Profiles.