Rapid Setup of Tissue Microarray and Tiled Area Imaging on the Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging Microscope Using the Tile/SED/Array Interface

Multiplexed ion beam imaging (MIBI) is a next-generation mass spectrometry-based microscopy technique that generates 40+ plex images of protein expression in histologic tissues, enabling detailed dissection of cellular phenotypes and histoarchitectural organization. A key bottleneck in operation occurs when users select the physical locations on the tissue for imaging. As the scale and complexity of MIBI experiments have increased, the manufacturer-provided interface and third-party tools have become increasingly unwieldy for imaging large tissue microarrays and tiled tissue areas. Thus, a web-based, interactive, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) graphical interface layer - the tile/SED/array Interface (TSAI) - was developed for users to set imaging locations using familiar and intuitive mouse gestures such as drag-and-drop, click-and-drag, and polygon drawing. Written according to web standards already built into modern web browsers, it requires no installation of external programs, extensions, or compilers. Of interest to the hundreds of current MIBI users, this interface dramatically simplifies and accelerates the setup of large, complex MIBI runs.