Baseline Correction of MALDI Mass Spectrometry Imaging
Betsy Williams, Anna Crecelius, Shannon Cornett, Richard M. Caprioli, Benoit Dawant, and Bobby
Bodenheimer
Abstract
Visualization and differentiation of proteins in tissue are problems
of increasing interest in computational systems biology,
bioinformatics, and image processing. A platform for generating
such proteomic information is matrix-assisted laser desorption
ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS). In imaging MALDI-
MS, spatial information and protein expression can be created.
However, data from imaging MALDI-MS spectra require
considerable signal processing to generate quantitative results and
to provide input to later classification algorithms. To compare
MALDI-MS spectra at different spatial locations (sample-to-
sample comparisons) or classify parts of the spectra, a processing
step called baseline correction is essential. This paper reports a
robust algorithm for computing the baseline correction of
MALDI-MS spectra. The algorithm requires few user inputs and
is suitable for automatically processing a large number of spectra,
as is the case when generating images. The results of our
algorithm are validated on a dataset of spectra available for
comparison purposes.
Bobby Bodenheimer 
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