Abstract: The present invention features test systems and methods for detecting a hepatic disorder in a mammal and especially a primate. Preferred use of the invention involves staging the hepatic disorder in a human patient.

Abstract: In a method generating correlative data from various products of thermal degradation of biological specimens and comprising sequential steps for each specimen of degrading such specimen by heating such specimen so as to cause various products of thermal degradation of such specimen to be evolved, ionizing the products of thermal degradation of such specimen by a technique causing negligible fragmentation, detecting ion currents for such specimen, and recording such detected ion currents, an improvement is attained wherein each specimen is heated in an identical non-isothermal time-dependent heating sequence, wherein a three-dimensional array comprising a large and sufficient number of ion currents, which correspond to substantially all detectible ratios of mass-to-charge within a range at a large and sufficient number of successive instants during the respective heating sequences, are detected and recorded for each specimen, and representative data from the three-dimensional array thus recorded for each one o

Abstract: A method facilitating the rapid and objective classification and/or identification of an unknown biological specimen is disclosed. A physical sample of the specimen is controllably heated in accordance with a predetermined nonisothermal time dependent function causing the sample to undergo controlled thermal degradation and give off a characteristic time dependent sequence or evolution pattern of gaseous degradation components (molecular fragments). This sequence of gaseous degradation components is then directly passed into an ionization source and ionized to provide a respectively corresponding time dependent sequence of characteristic ions. These ions are then analyzed in a mass spectrometer and measured data is recorded representing the respective quantities of ions having particular masses being produced as a function of time or temperature.