3D MALDI Imaging

Mass spectrometry is the foremost tool for studying and identifying metabolic biomarkers. MALDI imaging spectrometry, a common technique for mass spectrometry, only gives insight into a fraction of the information available in the three-dimensional organ. The acquisition of the spectra is based on processing single 2D slices, each handled independently. Fraunhofer MEVIS has developed a 3D reconstruction of the 2D data, enabling fusion of all information into one 3D space. 3D MALDI imaging enables direct comparison and mass calculations of all slices at once. Thus, the measured spectra can be combined, and clusters can be calculated for entire objects. 3D MALDI imaging helps find colocations of metabolic biomarkers for the whole organ, not just for single slides.

• Fully automatic preprocessing of slide scans fusing spectral and imaging data.
• Fast, fully automatic reconstruction of three-dimensional anatomy via image registration.

• Optimized visualization of anatomic and functional data.
• Fusion of all data (images, mass distributions, and clustering results).