Knowing the spatial location of the lipid species present in biological samples is of paramount importance for the elucidation of pathological and physiological processes. In this context, mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has emerged as a powerful technology allowing the visualization of the spatial distributions of biomolecules, including lipids, in complex biological samples. Among the different ionization methods available, the emerging surface-assisted laser desorption/ionization (SALDI) MSI offers unique capabilities for the study of lipids. This review describes the specific advantages of SALDI-MSI for lipid analysis, including the ability to perform analyses in both ionization modes with the same nanosubstrate, the detection of lipids characterized by low ionization efficiency in MALDI-MS, and the possibilities of surface modification to improve the detection of lipids. The complementarity of SALDI and MALDI-MSI is also discussed. Finally, this review presents data processing strategies applied in SALDI-MSI of lipids, as well as examples of applications of SALDI-MSI in biomedical lipidomics.

了解生物样品中脂质种类的空间位置对于阐明病理和生理过程至关重要。在这种情况下，质谱成像 (MSI) 已成为一项强大的技术，可以可视化复杂生物样品中包括脂质在内的生物分子的空间分布。在可用的不同电离方法中，新兴的表面辅助激光解吸/电离 (SALDI) MSI 为脂质研究提供了独特的功能。本综述描述了 SALDI-MSI 在脂质分析中的具体优势，包括使用相同的纳米底物在两种电离模式下进行分析的能力，在 MALDI-MS 中检测以低电离效率为特征的脂质，以及表面修饰以改善脂质检测的可能性。还讨论了 SALDI 和 MALDI-MSI 的互补性。最后，本综述介绍了脂质 SALDI-MSI 中应用的数据处理策略，以及 SALDI-MSI 在生物医学脂质组学中的应用示例。