Part B: SLICE-MSI—A Machine Learning Interface for System Suitability Testing of Mass Spectrometry Imaging Platforms

Rationale

The field of mass spectrometry imaging is currently devoid of standardized protocols or commercially available products designed for system suitability testing of MSI platforms. Machine learning is an approach that can quickly and effectively identify complex patterns in data and use them to make informed classifications, but there is a technical barrier to implementing these algorithms. Here we package the machine learning algorithms into a user-friendly interface to make community-wide implementation of this protocol possible.

Methods

The software package is built entirely in the Python language using the PySimpleGUI library for the construction of the interface, Pandas and Numpy libraries for data formatting and manipulation, and the Scikit-Learn library for the implementation of machine learning algorithms. Training data is collected on an instrument under clean and compromised conditions that can then be used to evaluate model performance and to train models prior to interrogating unknown samples before, during, or after experiments.

Results

Detailed instructions are provided for the effective use of the SLICE-MSI software package to use machine learning to evaluate instrument condition of MSI platforms. File formatting and generalizable steps are clearly described to make the implementation of this package easy for multiple labs and different MSI platform configurations.

Conclusions

In this protocol, we demonstrate SLICE-MSI, a machine learning graphical user interface for efficient and easy implementation of QC instrument classification of mass spectrometry imaging platforms.