Analysis of tattoo pigments in skin samples: Complementary molecular and elemental imaging using LDI-timsTOF-MS and µXRF

As the percentage of tattoed persons in Europe and North America still increases, a significant number of issues including allergic reactions and inflammations is observed. Often, these issues are linked to the used pigments, and their identity mostly is not known to the tattooed persons. Therefore, analytical methods for the rapid and reliable identification of tattoo pigments in human skin samples have been developed.

Organic pigments are characterized by laser desorption ionization-trapped ion mobility spectrometry-time of flight-mass spectrometry (LDI-timsTOF-MS) imaging, while inorganic pigments are detected by benchtop micro X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) imaging. In this webinar, the respective analytical methods and applications are presented.

Presenter: Prof. Dr. Uwe Karst (University of Münster, Institute of Inorganic and Analytical, Chemistry, Germany)