Ambient mass spectrometry imaging (AMSI) is a molecular imaging technique developed in recent years for in situ and real time visualization of the distribution of chemical compounds in biological tissues without the need of labeling or staining. With the development for more than one decade, AMSI becomes a powerful molecular imaging technique in variousfields such as forensics, metabolomics, cancer diagnosis, and drug monitoring. In this review, we describe the recent advances of AMSI for imaging biological tissues in details. Three types of AMSI techniques based on different ionization mechanisms and analytical strategies are summarized, i.e., direct desorption/ionization of analytes for AMSI, desorption and then ionization of analytes for AMSI, and extraction of analytes for AMSI, and the features of them are presented from the aspects of tissue origin, target image molecule, and spatial resolution among others. In addition, future development directions for AMSI are discussed.

中文翻译：

---

生物组织环境质谱成像的最新进展：综述

环境质谱成像 (AMSI) 是近年来开发的一种分子成像技术，用于原位实时可视化生物组织中化合物的分布，无需标记或染色。经过十多年的发展，AMSI已成为法医学、代谢组学、癌症诊断和药物监测等各个领域的强大分子成像技术。在这篇综述中，我们详细描述了 AMSI 在生物组织成像方面的最新进展。总结了基于不同电离机制和分析策略的三种 AMSI 技术，即 AMSI 分析物的直接解吸/电离、AMSI 分析物的解吸然后电离以及 AMSI 分析物的提取，并从组织来源、目标图像分子、空间分辨率等方面介绍了它们的特征。此外，还讨论了 AMSI 的未来发展方向。