Automated, parallel mass spectrometry imaging and structural identification of lipids

We report a method that enables automated data-dependent acquisition of lipid tandem mass spectrometry data in parallel with a high-resolution mass spectrometry imaging experiment. The method does not increase the total image acquisition time and is combined with automatic structural assignments. This lipidome-per-pixel approach automatically identified and validated 104 unique molecular lipids and their spatial locations from rat cerebellar tissue. An automated method coupling tandem mass spectrometry with high-resolution mass spectrometry imaging simultaneously reveals both the molecular structure of lipids and their spatial locations in tissue.