From publishing papers to controlling production lines: customers of imaging sources are moving from the laboratory to the workshop

A few years ago, the primary audience for mass spectrometry imaging was research groups publishing papers: a single striking molecular image of a mouse brain section was enough to underpin a good article. Over the past year or two, the focus of demand has been shifting—an increasing number of clients from industry and quality control are beginning to ask serious questions such as, ‘Can the imaging source be integrated into production lines and used for batch control?’ This shift is worth examining in more detail.

Q: What exactly is the difference between the requirements for imaging sources in industry and research?

A: Research places greater emphasis on ‘what new discoveries can be made’, and is tolerant of slow progress and small sample sizes; industry, on the other hand, prioritises ‘stability, uniformity and scalability’. For example, in pharmaceutical quality control, the focus is on whether the active ingredients in a tablet are evenly distributed. Traditional sampling and homogenisation methods yield only an average value, failing to reveal the uniformity across the entire tablet, whereas imaging can directly map the spatial distribution of molecules within the tablet. Among the application areas for Xinceyuan’s imaging sources, pharmacokinetics and industrial sectors (chemical raw materials, packaging materials, dyes, cosmetics, material matrices and food ingredient analysis) are explicitly listed.

Q: What is the biggest hurdle in moving from the laboratory to the production floor?

A: It is the pre-treatment and the barrier to use. Many imaging technologies require matrix spraying and complex sample purification, which are not production-line-friendly. New Ceyuan’s MSI DPI requires no matrix spraying, has low ion suppression effects, and allows complex samples to be analysed directly; Similarly, the MSI LDPI requires no matrix spraying and is free from matrix interference. The elimination of sample preparation is a crucial step in transforming imaging from a ‘manual task’ into ‘routine testing’.

Q: What opportunities do domestically produced imaging sources have in this shift in demand?

A: The opportunity lies in ‘adapting to existing equipment’. The industry often already possesses mainstream mass spectrometers from Agilent, AB SCIEX and Thermo; connecting a domestic imaging source directly to the front end is less costly and quicker to implement than replacing the entire instrument. New Ceyuan has designed the DPI series—comprising the 25A, 25S and 25T models corresponding to these three brands—to be plug-and-play, specifically to meet this demand.

Q: Are imaging sources suitable for all industrial applications?

A: No. Imaging is suitable for scenarios where ‘spatial distribution itself carries information’—such as tablet uniformity, spatial variations in the origin and composition of traditional Chinese medicine, areas of food adulteration, and the tracing of forensic fingerprints and ink marks. If the focus is solely on total content, conventional injection is faster and cheaper. The value of the imaging source lies in its ability to answer ‘where’ and ‘whether the distribution is uniform’, rather than merely ‘how much’.

Q: How will the customer base change over the next three to five years?

A: Research will remain the core market, but the proportion of industrial and quality control clients will increase. As the engineering maturity of pre-treatment-free, modular and stable operation improves, imaging sources will shift from being ‘research instruments’ to becoming ‘testing instruments’. This is positive news for domestic manufacturers—the industrial sector places greater emphasis on value for money, lead times and local service, which are precisely the strengths of the self-reliant and controllable approach.

Demand is shifting from the laboratory to the production floor, not because imaging sources have become cheaper, but because they have become easier to use. When an imaging source requires no pre-treatment, is plug-and-play, and operates stably over the long term, customers will naturally shift their focus from ‘publishing papers’ to ‘controlling production lines’.