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SCIEX WIFF

SCIEX legacy .wiff/.wiff.scan files are read by opensxraw, a pure-Rust reader for the CFBF-container .wiff format, clean-room reverse-engineered with no SCIEX SDK or software dependency. It covers the TripleTOF and QTRAP instrument families.

Detection​

A path is treated as SCIEX when:

  • the filename has a .wiff extension (case-insensitive), and
  • a sibling <name>.wiff.scan file exists alongside it.

A .wiff file with no paired .wiff.scan file is not detected - detect_format returns None even though the extension matches, because the reader needs the paired scan file to decode spectra.

Covered features​

  • TripleTOF and QTRAP acquisitions.
  • CFBF stream catalog and .wiff.scan block/token-stream decoding.
  • TOF m/z calibration and MS2 precursor m/z.
  • Indexed mzML with native-id format SCIEX nativeID format (MS:1000823).

Known gaps​

  • .wiff2, SCIEX's newer self-contained format, is not supported. It was investigated in depth and found to use proprietary, non- standard page encryption that could not be resolved from the ciphertext alone; .wiff2 support is deferred pending new information. See OpenSXRaw's format writeups for the investigation.
  • The reader currently reports every spectrum as profile-mode / TOFMS analyzer regardless of actual instrument family - QTRAP records are nominal-mass, not true TOF. This is a simplification, not yet instrument-aware.

Tested instruments​

The conformance suite is tested against a real TripleTOF 5600 corpus file (2228 scans decoded).

See also​