DESI imaging of small molecules in biological tissues

Abstract

Desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) allows the direct analysis of ordinary objects or preprocessed samples under ambient conditions. Among other applications, DESI is used to identify and to record spatial distributions of small molecules in situ, sliced or imprinted biological tissue. Manipulation of the chemistry accompanying ambient analysis ionization can be used to optimize chemical analysis, including molecular imprinting. Images are obtained by continuously moving the sample relative to the DESI sprayer and the inlet of the mass spectrometer. The acquisition time depends on the size of the surface to be analyzed and on the desired resolution.