Metabolite identification is one of the most challenging steps in metabolomics and is often the main bottleneck in the entire workflow.¹  A low identification rate hinders biological interpretation of the experiment due to many pieces of the puzzle being missing. A significant misidentification rate could lead to inconsistent analysis of the results and even wrong biological interpretations.²  Achieving a high percentage of correct metabolite identifications is fundamental for subsequent biological interpretation.

There are several classifications of confidence levels for the identification of metabolites;³  the most popular is that proposed by the Metabolomics Society. It includes five different...