Fig. 2

Overlapping detection algorithm performance when searching for the \(Ag_{6}\) cluster in Dataset 1. a Comparison between the mean experimental spectra and the theoretical \(Ag_{6}\) cluster at the \(Ag_{6}\) cluster masses within a tolerance of 4 scans. Red and blue represent theoretical and experimental profiles, respectively. As can be seen, while the peaks in the centre of the cluster perfectly match the theoretical ratios, the peaks on the edges differ considerably. b Spatial distributions of the experimental cluster peaks. After performing the overlapping detection only the four ion images in the centre in green are classified as Ag-related. The remaining ion images in red are classified as \(Ag^{n + }\) suffering from overlapping. The morphologies of the \(Ag^{n + }\) overlapped ions (red) differ from the ones without overlapping (green) due to ion overlapping. c Correlation matrix between the experimental ion images of the \(Ag_{6}\) cluster. The ion image number corresponds to the position of the ion in the isotopic pattern in ascending order of m/z. The first two images are clearly not correlated with the remaining images of the cluster. The last image also shows a considerably lower correlation. d Zoom-in of experimental mean spectra. Peaks m/z 641.43 and m/z 643.43 show clear overlapping