Thyra connects mass spectrometry imaging with SpatialData for multimodal biology
Published in Bioinformatics, Journals, Scanners and Imaging, Tools.
Published October 31, 2026.
Thyra is an open-source Python library designed to connect mass spectrometry imaging with other spatial biology measurements. A report published October 28 in Nature Methods describes its conversion of continuous raw vendor datasets and imzML data into the SpatialData format.
Mass spectrometry imaging maps where molecules occur within samples. Combining those maps with histology, immunofluorescence or spatial transcriptomics can provide complementary information, but incompatible file formats and large datasets complicate analysis.
Thyra addresses this data integration problem by bringing imaging mass spectrometry into a shared framework for multimodal workflows. The authors provide an example dataset and a tutorial demonstrating the process.
The project is released under the MIT license and is available through PyPI. Documentation includes installation instructions, command-line and programming interfaces, and a browser-based Google Colab tutorial.
This is a research software contribution. Converting data into a common format does not by itself validate biological interpretations or clinical measurements; alignment and analysis choices still require checking.
Source: Visvikis, T., Hendriks, T.F.E., Vierdag, W.-M. et al., Nature Methods, October 28, 2026. Read the original report.