Efficient spatial segmentation of large imaging mass spectrometry datasets with spatially aware clustering

Imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) is one of the few measurement technology s of biochemistry which, given a thin sample, is able to reveal its spatial chemical composition in the full molecular range. IMS produces a hyperspectral image, where for each pixel a high-dimensional mass spectrum is measured. Currently, the technology is mature enough and one of the major problems preventing its spreading is the under-development of computational methods for mining huge IMS datasets. This article proposes a novel approach for spatial segmentation of an IMS dataset, which is constructed considering the important issue of pixel-to-pixel variability.