质谱成像已从一项小众技术发展成为广泛应用的空间生物学工具，在众多领域的前沿发挥作用，最显着的是对生物医学药理学研究产生了重大影响。该领域的发展与新实验室出版物和技术使用的增加齐头并进，因此导致从一般 MSI 审查转向针对特定主题的审查。鉴于这一发展，我们认为需要通过提供最先进的 MSI 研究的更全面的概述来概括 MSI 的优势，为新一代研究人员提供最新的参考框架。在这里，我们回顾了 MSI 应用的六大生物医学领域（肿瘤学、药理学、神经病学、心血管疾病、内分泌学和风湿病学）的科学进展。因此，这些出版物至少给出了以下类别之一的示例：它们提供了新颖的机制见解，使用了异常大的队列规模，建立了有潜力成为高影响力方法的工作流程，或者在其领域被高度引用。我们终于看到了 MSI（免疫学、微生物学、传染病和衰老）的新兴领域和趋势，因为技术突破导致 MSI 的应用不断拓宽。

Mass spectrometry imaging has advanced from a niche technique to a widely applied spatial biology tool operating at the forefront of numerous fields, most notably making a significant impact in biomedical pharmacological research. The growth of the field has gone hand in hand with an increase in publications and usage of the technique by new laboratories, and consequently this has led to a shift from general MSI reviews to topic-specific reviews. Given this development, we see the need to recapitulate the strengths of MSI by providing a more holistic overview of state-of-the-art MSI studies to provide the new generation of researchers with an up-to-date reference framework. Here we review scientific advances for the six largest biomedical fields of MSI application (oncology, pharmacology, neurology, cardiovascular diseases, endocrinology, and rheumatology). These publications thereby give examples for at least one of the following categories: they provide novel mechanistic insights, use an exceptionally large cohort size, establish a workflow that has the potential to become a high-impact methodology, or are highly cited in their field. We finally have a look into new emerging fields and trends in MSI (immunology, microbiology, infectious diseases, and aging), as applied MSI is continuously broadening as a result of technological breakthroughs.