Automated co-analysis of MALDI and H&E images of retinal tissue for an improved spatial MALDI resolution

Abstract

MALDI imaging is a powerful technology to gain proteome information with high mass spectroscopic resolution from tissue slides. As its spatial resolution is lower than that of standard optical microscopy, improving the resolution to allow investigation of cell-sized objects is highly desirable. In this contribution we present an approach to virtually improve MALDI’s spatial resolution in cases where the relevant structures have an approximately linear shape and can be transformed into a one-dimensional problem. By applying an automated image analysis to co-registered microscopy data, we can obtain the parameters necessary to support a MALDI-based modeling approach for investigating porcine retinal tissue.