MALDI Imaging with Ion-Mobility MS: Waters Corporation

For reasons of the unique detection principle based on mass spectrometry, MALDI-IMS provides an attractive proposition for molecular imaging, as a large range of different compounds can be detected simultaneously with simple protocol and fast data acquisition; also, it does not require any labeling of compounds of interest. In addition, the combination of ion-mobility separation with MALDI TOF-MS provides a unique separation dimension to further enhance IMS; ion-mobility spectros-copy can be used to produce images without interference from background ions of similar mass, which can remove ambiguity from imaging experiments and lead to more precise localization of the compound of interest, such as drugs and metabolites. Thus, ion-mobility TOF-MS has the potential to reduce complexity and improve confidence in imaging experiments.