MALDI imaging analysis of a tissue section. In a typical imaging workflow, tissue sections (fresh-frozen or deparaffinized) are sprayed with a chemical matrix to aid analyte desorption and ionization. A specific area of the section (referred to as a pixel) is then irradiated by a laser beam in the MALDI source, recording a mass spectrum of ionized analytes. This process is repeated in a rasterizing pattern across the tissue section, and analyte abundances across all pixels are overlaid to generate a spatial image of the analyte distribution.