Springer (part of Springer Nature), Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, 8(407), p. 2035-2045
DOI: 10.1007/s00216-014-8322-6
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IntroductionMass spectrometry imaging (MSI) uses biomolecular mass spectrometry techniques to simultaneously record the distributions of molecules directly from tissue samples [1] and within their histological context [2]. MSI is now applied in increasingly diverse biomedical and biological applications, from the identification of clinical biomarkers [3], to the label-free quantification of drugs and metabolites [4], to revealing the molecular cartography of plant tissues [5]. The different focus areas have necessarily led to application-specific approaches, but even within the basic MSI experiment there is still much scope for methodological differences that affect the resulting data [6]. A cursory overview of an MSI experiment includes multiple aspects where differences may arise: tissue processing (e.g., embedding and storage conditions), tissue preparation (e.g., sectioning and matrix application), data acquisition (e.g., ionization method, spatial resolution, and mass analyzer), d ...