Quantification of Signal-to-Noise Ratio in Cerebral Cortex Recordings Using Flexible MEAs With Co-localized Platinum Black, Carbon Nanotubes, and Gold Electrodes

Developing new standardized tools to characterize brain recording devices is critical to evaluate neural probes and for translation to clinical use. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) measurement is the gold standard for quantifying the performance of brain recording devices. Given the drawbacks with the SNR measure, our first objective was to devise a new method to calculate the SNR of neural signals to distinguish signal from noise. Our second objective was to apply this new SNR method to evaluate electrodes of three different materials (platinum black, Pt; carbon nanotubes, CNTs; and gold, Au) co-localized in tritrodes to record from the same cortical area using specifically designed multielectrode arrays. Hence, we devised an approach to calculate SNR at different frequencies based on the features of cortical slow oscillations (SO). Since SO consist in the alternation of silent periods (Down states) and active periods (Up states) of neuronal activity, we used these as noise and signal, respectively. The spectral SNR was computed as the power spectral density (PSD) of Up states (signal) divided by the PSD of Down states (noise). We found that Pt and CNTs electrodes have better recording performance than Au electrodes for the explored frequency range (5–1500 Hz). Together with two proposed SNR estimators for the lower and upper frequency limits, these results substantiate our SNR calculation at different frequency bands. Our results provide a new validated SNR measure that provides rich information of the performance of recording devices at different brain activity frequency bands (<1500 Hz).