Mass spectrometry imaging as a tool for surgical decision-making

Surgical teams have available a number of real‐time imaging tools to help identify and locate tumor tissue. Mass spectrometry, is proven capable of producing molecular signatures from resected tissue which, in turn, has long promised to aid in determining if all tissue which exhibits tumorous molecular signatures has been removed. A few groups have pioneered the transitioning of mass spectrometry from research lab to surgical suite and among these are Professor Nathalie Agar's team at Brigham And Women's Hospital ‐ Harvard Medical School, who present our Special Feature. Agar's team have sited an ion trap system with DESI ion source into the Advanced Multimodality Image Guided Operating (AMIGO) suite and show that MS information can play a role in surgical decision making.