Iolite is a software package for deconvolution of data obtained by laser ablation ICPMS. Following a concerted effort over a period of years by various members of the Melbourne Isotope and trace element group, we now consider the software sufficiently advanced for general release to the research community. We hope that Iolite will enrich your laser ablation experience…

History and design philosophy

Laser ablation ICP-MS is a uniquely powerful technique for the spatially-resolved analysis of geological materials, but has been hindered in this application by the absence of suitably flexible tools for data processing and visualisation. With the development of Iolite we have tried to address this deficiency.  Key design parameters include:

1. an entirely generic format which will accept data from any instrument provided the export data format includes enough information to calculate the absolute time for each time slice of data stored within the file.

2. modular data reduction schemes which are entirely user-defined and can be of any level of complexity, providing complete user-control.

3. full data control and visualisation at all stages of processing.

4. an ability to capture time-resolved data simultaneously from different mass spectrometers.

Iolite was developed from an original concept by John Hellstrom, under a Hermon Slade Foundation Grant to Janet Hergt and Jon Woodhead. Ongoing development is by John Hellstrom, Chad Paton and Jon Woodhead with the assistance and input of members of the Isotope and Trace Element Geochemistry Group, The University of Melbourne.

Screen shots

The main Iolite overview window

Iolite's secondary time resolved window

Iolite's secondary time resolved window

Iolite's 2-dimensional imaging interface

Movies

Here are a few QuickTime movies which show Iolite in operation

Distribution

Iolite’s host environment, Igor Pro, runs natively on recent versions of both Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.  Igor Pro was chosen for its smooth handling of data sets containing tens of independent channels at hundreds of thousands of points each, its high-level compiled macro language and its extensive 2- and 3-dimensional data visualisation capabilities.  Igor Pro is available from www.wavemetrics.com as a fully-functional 30-day trial version, after which time it will revert to a limited-functionality demonstration version until registered.

The Iolite package will be made available as freeware (see below).  Although the underlying source code is not released, the plug-in data reduction modules are open-source by design and form the environment where all user-defined time-resolved data processing takes place.  Iolite itself has been extensively tested on recent (Intel) versions of the Apple platform. While we fully expect it to perform correctly on PCs running Windows this has not been verified and remains a low development priority.

Currently, data import modules exist for Varian 810 and Nu Plasma mass spectrometers, with modules for other instruments in development. We are happy to consider writing import modules for any ‘mainstream’ ICPMS if example export file formats can be provided.

Iolite development at Melbourne has involved many people and much time and effort over a period of years. If you are happy with the software and use it regularly we would greatly appreciate appropriate references to our papers in your publications.

We plan to release Iolite shortly after the Goldschmidt 2008 laser ablation short course. Watch this site for further details.