Rapid Visualization of Chemically Related Compounds Using Kendrick Mass Defect as a Filter in Mass Spectrometry Imaging

Draft article concerning our work about the use of Kendrick mass defect for filtering mass spectrometry imaging data. Kendrick mass defect (KMD) analysis is widely used for helping the detection and identification of chemically related compounds based on exact mass measurements. We report here the use of KMD as a criterion for filtering complex mass spectrometry data. The method enables an automated, faster and efficient data processing, enabling the reconstruction of 2D distributions of family of homologous compound in MSI images. We show that the KMD filtering, based on a homemade software, is suitable for low resolution and high resolution MSI data. This method has been successfully applied to two different types of samples, bacteria co-cultures and brain tissue section.