Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, Justus Liebig University Giessen, 35392, Giessen, Germany.
J Am Soc Mass Spectrom. 2013 Aug;24(8):1296-306. doi: 10.1007/s13361-013-0667-0. Epub 2013 Jun 13.
Mass spectrometric imaging (MSI) techniques are of growing interest for the Life Sciences. In recent years, the development of new instruments employing ion sources that are tailored for spatial scanning allowed the acquisition of large data sets. A subsequent data processing, however, is still a bottleneck in the analytical process, as a manual data interpretation is impossible within a reasonable time frame. The transformation of mass spectrometric data into spatial distribution images of detected compounds turned out to be the most appropriate method to visualize the results of such scans, as humans are able to interpret images faster and easier than plain numbers. Image generation, thus, is a time-consuming and complex yet very efficient task. The free software package "Mirion," presented in this paper, allows the handling and analysis of data sets acquired by mass spectrometry imaging. Mirion can be used for image processing of MSI data obtained from many different sources, as it uses the HUPO-PSI-based standard data format imzML, which is implemented in the proprietary software of most of the mass spectrometer companies. Different graphical representations of the recorded data are available. Furthermore, automatic calculation and overlay of mass spectrometric images promotes direct comparison of different analytes for data evaluation. The program also includes tools for image processing and image analysis.
质谱成像（MSI）技术在生命科学领域越来越受到关注。近年来，开发了新的仪器，采用了针对空间扫描定制的离子源，从而能够获取大量数据集。然而，随后的数据处理仍然是分析过程中的一个瓶颈，因为在合理的时间内不可能进行手动数据解释。将质谱数据转换为检测化合物的空间分布图像是可视化此类扫描结果的最合适方法，因为人类能够比单纯的数字更快、更容易地解释图像。因此，生成图像是一项耗时、复杂但非常高效的任务。本文介绍的免费软件包“Mirion”允许处理和分析通过质谱成像采集的数据。Mirion 可用于处理来自许多不同来源的 MSI 数据，因为它使用基于 HUPO-PSI 的标准数据格式 imzML，而大多数质谱仪公司的专有软件都实现了这一标准。可以使用不同的图形表示记录的数据。此外，自动计算和叠加质谱图像促进了不同分析物的数据评估的直接比较。该程序还包括图像处理和图像分析工具。
