Information Entropy-Based Strategy for the Quantitative Evaluation of Extensive Hyperspectral Images to Better Unveil Spatial Heterogeneity in Mass Spectrometry Imaging

Hyperspectral images can be generated from mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) data for the intuitive data visualization purpose. However, hundreds of HSIs can be generated by different dimensionality reduction methods, which poses great challenges in selecting the high-quality images with the best intuitive visualization results of the MSI data. Here, we presented a novel approach that objectively evaluates the image quality of the hyperspectral images. The applicability of this method was demonstrated by analyzing the MSI data acquired from human prostate cancer biopsy samples and mouse brain tissue section, which harbored an intrinsic tissue heterogeneity. Our method was based on the information entropy and contrast measured from image information content and image definition, respectively. The heterogeneity of the MSI data from high-dimensional space was reduced to three-dimensional embeddings and thoroughly evaluated to achieve satisfactory visualization results. The application of information entropy and contrast can be used to choose the optimized visualization results rapidly and objectively from an extensive number of hyperspectral images and be adopted to evaluate and optimize different dimensionality reduction algorithms and their hyperparameter combinations. In conclusion, the information entropy-based strategy could be a bridge between chemometrician and biologists.