Mass recalibration for desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry imaging using endogenous reference ions

1 Abstract Background Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) data often consist of tens of thousands of mass spectra collected from a sample surface. During the time necessary to perform a single acquisition, it is likely that uncontrollable factors alter the validity of the initial mass calibration of the instrument, resulting in mass errors of magnitude significantly larger than their expected values. This phenomenon has a two-fold detrimental effect: a) it reduces the ability to interpret the results based on the observed signals, b) it can affect the quality of the observed signal spatial distributions. Results We present a post-acquisition computational method capable of reducing the observed mass drift by up to 60 ppm in biological samples, exploiting the presence of typical molecules with a known mass-to-charge ratio. The procedure, tested on time-of-flight (TOF) and Orbitrap mass spectrometry analyzers interfaced to a desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) source, improves the molecular annotation quality and the spatial distributions of the detected ions. Conclusion The presented method represents a robust and accurate tool for performing post-acquisition mass recalibration of DESI-MSI datasets and can help to increase the reliability of the molecular assignment and the data quality.