NECTAR: A New Algorithm for Characterizing and Correcting Noise in QToF-Mass Spectrometry Imaging Data

A typical mass spectrometry imaging experiment yields a very high number of detected peaks, many of which are noise and thus unwanted. To select only peaks of interest, data preprocessing tasks are applied to raw data. A statistical study to characterize three types of noise in MSI QToF data (random, chemical, and background noise) is presented through NECTAR, a new NoisE CorrecTion AlgoRithm. Random noise is confirmed to be dominant at lower m/z values (similar to 50-400 Da) while systematic chemical noise dominates at higher m/z values (>400 Da). A statistical approach is presented to demonstrate that chemical noise can be corrected to reduce its presence by a factor of similar to 3. Reducing this effect helps to determine a more reliable baseline in the spectrum and therefore a more reliable noise level. Peaks are classified according to their spatial S/N on the single ion images, and background noise is thus removed from the list of peaks of interest. This new algorithm was applied to MALDI and DESI QToF data generated from the analysis of a mouse pancreatic tissue section to demonstrate its applicability and ability to filter out these types of noise in a relevant data set. PCA and t-SNE multivariate analysis reviews of the top 4000 peaks and the final 744 and 299 denoised peak list for MALDI and DESI, respectively, suggests an effective removal of uninformative peaks and proper selection of relevant peaks.