The present work focuses on the application of time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) in osteoporotic bone research. In order to demonstrate the benefit, the authors present concrete application examples of ToF-SIMS in three different areas of bone research. ToF-SIMS as a mass spectrometric imaging technique allows simultaneous visualization of mineralized and nonmineralized bone tissue as well as implanted biomaterials and bone implant interphases. In the first example, the authors show that it is possible to study the incorporation and distribution of different components released from bone filler materials into bone with a single mass spectrometric measurement. This not only enables imaging of nonstained bone cross sections but also provides further insights beyond histologically obtained information. Furthermore, they successfully identified several mass fragments as markers for newly formed cartilage tissue and growth joint in bone. Different modes of ToF-SIMS as well as different SIMS instruments (IONTOF's TOF.SIMS 5 and M6 Hybrid SIMS, Ionoptika's J105) were used to identify these mass signals and highlight the high versatility of this method. In the third part, bone structure of cortical rat bone was investigated from bone sections embedded in technovit (polymethyl methacrylate, PMMA) and compared to cryosections. In cortical bone, they were able to image different morphological features, e.g., concentric arrangement of collagen fibers in so-called osteons as well as Haversian canals and osteocytes. In summary, the study provides examples of application and shows the strength of ToF-SIMS as a promising analytical method in the field of osteoporotic bone research.

中文翻译：

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骨质疏松性骨研究中ToF-SIMS成像的新见解。

目前的工作重点是飞行时间二次离子质谱（ToF-SIMS）在骨质疏松性骨研究中的应用。为了证明其益处，作者介绍了ToF-SIMS在骨骼研究的三个不同领域中的具体应用实例。ToF-SIMS作为质谱成像技术，可以同时显示矿化和非矿化的骨组织以及植入的生物材料和骨植入物的中间相。在第一个示例中，作者表明，可以通过一次质谱测量研究从骨填充剂材料释放的不同成分在骨骼中的掺入和分布。这不仅可以对未染色的骨横断面进行成像，而且还可以提供从组织学上获得的信息以外的更多见解。此外，他们成功地鉴定出了几个块状碎片，作为新形成的软骨组织和骨骼生长关节的标记。ToF-SIMS的不同模式以及不同的SIMS仪器（IONTOF的TOF.SIMS 5和M6 Hybrid SIMS，Ionoptika的J105）用于识别这些质量信号，并突出了此方法的高度通用性。在第三部分中，从嵌入在technovit中的骨骼切片（聚甲基丙烯酸甲酯，PMMA）中研究了皮质大鼠骨骼的骨骼结构，并将其与冷冻切片进行了比较。在皮质骨中，他们能够成像不同的形态特征，例如，胶原纤维同心排列在所谓的骨质以及哈弗氏管和骨细胞中。综上所述，