Request: Support for Chromatotec .chrom files

[miraculouswangdoodle]

Hello,

I'm working with Chromatotec gas chromatography data files (.chrom format)
from Vistachrom software for air quality VOC monitoring. Currently, chromConverter
doesn't recognize this format. I'm wondering if you would be open to editing your
package to work with these files, which would be helpful to me in QC and data extraction.
I suspect that as these instruments gain use, this will have increasing utility.

I'd be happy to provide sample .chrom files if that would help with adding support
for this format. The files contain standard GC peak data (retention times, areas,
concentrations) that would be very useful to access directly in R.

Thank you for your package!

Gratefully,
Jaimie Ritchie

[ethanbass]

Sure, I'd be happy to look into it. Can you send me over some files to have a look at? If you like, you could email them to me at ethanbass at gmail.com . all best, Ethan

…

On Thu, Sep 4, 2025 at 1:32 PM miraculouswangdoodle < ***@***.***> wrote: *miraculouswangdoodle* created an issue (ethanbass/chromConverter#38) <#38> Hello, I'm working with Chromatotec gas chromatography data files (.chrom format) from Vistachrom software for air quality VOC monitoring. Currently, chromConverter doesn't recognize this format. I'm wondering if you would be open to editing your package to work with these files, which would be helpful to me in QC and data extraction. I suspect that as these instruments gain use, this will have increasing utility. I'd be happy to provide sample .chrom files if that would help with adding support for this format. The files contain standard GC peak data (retention times, areas, concentrations) that would be very useful to access directly in R. Thank you for your package! Gratefully, Jaimie Ritchie — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#38>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADZEBO67Q6WK3H6C7FMQ4VL3RBZTLAVCNFSM6AAAAACFUWN4P6VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43ASLTON2WKOZTGM4DINRZGUZTGNI> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[ethanbass]

Thanks for sharing your files. I took a first crack at this on the Chromatotec branch. I was able to extract some plausible looking chromatograms (though the scaling seems to be off) as well as peak tables that match the PDFs you sent over. There are also a number of extra fields in the peak tables that don't appear in the PDFs you sent over. For now, I labeled them U1-U6 (for "unknown"). If you know what any of these fields represent, please let me know so I can label them correctly. I was able to decode some of the metadata that appears in the PDF, but not all. For example, I wasn't yet able to figure out how the time stamps are encoded.

The "sampling rate" is an important field because I don't think the retention times are encoded directly in the file (as far as I can tell). I found a field that I think corresponds to the sampling rate but it is difficult to test my theory because all of the files you provided have the same sampling rate. If you have any files with a different sampling rate that would be helpful to test my theory about how this metadata is encoded in the files.

Please let me know if you find any other issues with the new parser.

Also, Would it be OK to include one of the test files in the package to use for automated tests?

Best,
Ethan