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S. Amirkhalili, M. Bonta, A. Limbeck:
"LA-ICP-MS imaging experiments on snap frozen tissue sections using a cooled ablation stage";
Talk: Metallomics 2017, Wien, Österreich; 08-13-2017 - 08-17-2017; in: "Book of Abstracts", (2017), 83.

Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is a rapid and accurate analytical method for direct elemental analysis of solid samples in their native state. In the last few years this technique has been used in many different medical and biological studies specifically for imaging of metal distributions in tissue sections.
Recently we have shown that snap frozen samples without fixation definitely provide the most accurate way for analysis of metal distributions in tissue samples. Nevertheless, conventional LA-ICP-MS instrumentation is operated at room temperature, thus thawing of the frozen samples is required prior to measurement. This step could introduce an additional error, since trace element distributions might be altered.
In this work a Peltier cooled ablation stage is proposed, which allows analysis of element distributions in frozen tissue samples. With this setup thawing of the sample could be completely circumvented, thereby all problems associated with sample melting are avoided. Applicability of this approach has been demonstrated by the analysis of cryo-cut tissues with 10 μm thickness at a temperature of -10 °C. Obtained results were compared with the findings derived via conventional measurement of thawed and dried cryo-cut tissue samples, benefits as well as observed drawbacks will be discussed.

Biological tissues, LA-ICP-MS, cooled ablation chamber, imaging