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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2017 Dec 21;42:138–146. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2017.12.005

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Examples of small metabolite and drug imaging in biological tissues using MS imaging coupled to IMS. The left panel shows an application of MALDI and TWIMS for separation of a stearoylcarnitine species from an isobaric background ion in breast tumor xenograft model tissue, allowing accurate imaging of the stearoylcarnitine ion. Species were identified by tandem MS analysis following TWIMS separation [25]. The middle panel shows an application of MALDI and TWIMS for imaging adenosine triphosphate, adenosine diphosphate, and adenosine monophosphate in mouse brain tissue, with corresponding ion mobility and mass spectra [26]. The right panel shows an application of LESA and FAIMS to separate isomeric cocaine metabolites BZE and NCOC, in human kidney tissue, with structures shown at the top of the panel. Addition of acetonitrile in the drift gas enables separation between the isomeric species, as shown in the top extracted ion chromatogram [66].