Large-scale, high-resolution data acquisition system for extracellular recording of electrophysiological activity

A platform for high spatial and temporal resolution electrophysiological recordings of in vitro electrogenic cell cultures handling 4096 electrodes at a full frame rate of 8 kHz is presented and validated by means of cardiomyocyte cultures. Based on an active pixel sensor device implementing an array of metallic electrodes, the system provides acquisitions at spatial resolutions of 42 mum on an active area of 2.67 mm times 2.67 mm, and in the zooming mode, temporal resolutions down to 8 mus on 64 randomly selected electrodes. The low-noise performances of the integrated amplifier (11 muV_rms) combined with a hardware implementation inspired by image/video processing concepts enable high-resolution acquisitions with real-time preprocessing capabilities adapted to the handling of the large amount of acquired data.