Sucrose cryo-protection facilitates imaging of whole eye sections by MALDI mass spectrometry.

Sucrose is used as a cryo-preservation agent on large mammalian eyes post formalin fixation and is shown to reduce freezing artefacts allowing the collection of 12-µm thick sections from these large aqueous samples. The suitability of this technique for use in MALDI imaging experiments is demonstrated by the acquisition of the first images of lipid distributions within whole sagittal porcine eye sections.