Tool to Resolve Distortions in Elemental and Isotopic Imaging

Chixiang Lu; Gu Chen; Wenxin Song; Kai Chen; Charmaine Hee; Mehran Nikan; Paul Guagliardo; C Frank Bennett; Punit Seth; Killugudi Swaminathan Iyer; Stephen G Young; Xiaojuan Qi; Haibo Jiang

doi:10.1021/jacs.4c05384

Tool to Resolve Distortions in Elemental and Isotopic Imaging

J Am Chem Soc. 2024 Jul 24;146(29):20221-20229. doi: 10.1021/jacs.4c05384. Epub 2024 Jul 10.

Authors

Chixiang Lu¹, Gu Chen¹, Wenxin Song², Kai Chen³, Charmaine Hee³, Mehran Nikan⁴, Paul Guagliardo⁵, C Frank Bennett⁴, Punit Seth⁴, Killugudi Swaminathan Iyer³, Stephen G Young^{2

6}, Xiaojuan Qi⁷, Haibo Jiang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong 999077, P. R. China.
² Departments of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, United States.
³ School of Molecular Sciences, University of Western Australia, Perth 6009, Australia.
⁴ Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Carlsbad, California 92010, United States.
⁵ Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis, University of Western Australia, Perth 6009, Australia.
⁶ Human Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, United States.
⁷ Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong 999077, P. R. China.

PMID: 38985464
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c05384

Abstract

Nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) makes it possible to visualize elements and isotopes in a wide range of samples at a high resolution. However, the fidelity and quality of NanoSIMS images often suffer from distortions because of a requirement to acquire and integrate multiple image frames. We developed an optical flow-based algorithm tool, NanoSIMS Stabilizer, for all-channel postacquisition registration of images. The NanoSIMS Stabilizer effectively deals with the distortions and artifacts, resulting in a high-resolution visualization of isotope and element distribution. It is open source with an easy-to-use ImageJ plugin and is accompanied by a Python version with GPU acceleration.