Sample Preparation

BNEIR can do initial analyses on existing sections or blocks that you may have already prepared:

Because LA-ICP-MS is a surface technique, make sure there are no cover slips on any sectioned tissue. Paraffin blocks can be also used, but make sure the block is faced so that the sample is at the surface. It’s preferable to section paraffin blocks (20 µm approximately) for complete, quantitative ablation. We avoid stained tissue because stains contain inorganic elements that confound the analysis.

H&E SECTIONS: If you have adjacent H&E sections of your samples, sending scanned images to BNEIR can be used for co-registration with your elemental mapping data.

If you don’t have specimens prepared: The quick start guide below will help you quickly find published methods for the best way to prepare your specimens for LA-ICP-MS analysis.

Hover over the tissue that most resembles your sample for published methods:

Sample Prep

Sample Prep
e.g. nanoparticles in human cell lines (Bohle et al, 2014) e.g. skin and brain (Clases et al, 2019) e.g. C. elegans (Crone et al, 2015) e.g. bone tissue (Crone et al, 2019) e.g. mouse organs (Egger et al, 2014) e.g. human liver (Egger et al, 2015) e.g. tumor and muscle (Klose et al, 2018) e.g. rat liver (Muller et al., 2018) e.g. rat brain (Neumann et al, 2020) e.g. human macrophages (Reifschneider et al, 2020)) e.g. tumor spheroids (Theiner et al, 2017) e.g. atherosclerotic plaques e.g. zebrafish (Ackerman, et al 2018) Methods for hard specimens Methods for soft tissue preparation

e.g. zebrafish (Ackerman, et al 2018)