Contexts are a central notion in hEIDI. Basically a context contains an identification result : groups of proteins identified by groups of peptides. This definition can be equally used for identification results issued from a search engine such as Mascot for example as well as identification results build up from many other identifications results compiled together. hEIDI distinguish two types of context :

• a Search context wich is a context associated with the identification result issued from a single search in Mascot (or other search engine). Each time a new search engine result is saved in the database by IRMa, a new search context is created.
• a User context is created by the user in order to organize and aggregate multiple search and/or user contexts.

After having opened an MSI session in your project, you can retreive the User context and Search context hierarchy in the MSIExplorer view.

In hEIDI, a Search Context is represented with .
A User context can contain either contexts or identifications, but you can't have both under the same context.
Below is an example showing a way to organize identifications.

In hEIDI, a Search Context is represented with .