HD Multielectrode Arrays, In-Vitro Recording
3Brain is the world’s first company that sells large scale high resolution MEA recording platforms and CMOS-MEA biochips. 3Brain’s patented core technology spans the field of large scale high resolution microelectrode array systems for in-vitro electrophysiology. Their key competences are focused on CMOS integrated bio-sensor arrays for recording extracellular signals from electrogenic cells, networks and tissues, such as in-vitro neuronal networks, brain slices and cardiac tissue preparations.
Website: https://www.3brain.com/
BioChips: Multielectrode arrays (MEA) for high resolution in-vitro extracellular electrophysiology.
BioChips are multi-use multielectrode arrays (MEA) for high resolution in-vitro extracellular electrophysiology. The chip is built in a standard CMOS-based technology and it is packaged onto a substrate together with a glass reservoir. The wide opening of the reservoir allows using a microscope for concurrent visual inspection of the experiment as well as integrating other recording techniques as patch clamp and voltage sensitive dyes.
Electrodes are coated with Pt to provide a stable and fully biocompatible surface that achieves good neuronal couplings for recordings. Different versions of BioChips are available to match your experimental needs in terms of resolution and field of view.
BioChip 4096S
The BioChip 4096S is a microelectrode array integrating 4096 electrodes on 2.67mm x 2.67mm centered in a 3mm x 3mm working area. The electrode size is 21µm x 21µm with a pitch of 42 µm. The glass ring internal diameter is 25mm with a height of 5mm. The noise level of the circuit is of 26 µVrms, but even though it is higher than conventional amplifiers, our electrodes provide high signal-to-noise recordings.
This device has been designed specifically for cell cultures.
BioChip 4096S+
The BioChip 4096S+ integrates 4096 electrodes on a 2.67mm x 2.67mm recording area centered in a 6mm x 6mm working area. This multielectrode configuration provides a larger area to facilitate coupling with electrogenic tissue (e.g. brain slices) and enables to record specific areas at the same spatial resolution of the BioChip 4096S. The electrode size is 21µm x 21µm with a pitch of 42 µm as well. The glass ring internal diameter is 25mm with a height of 5mm. The noise level of the circuit is of 26 µVrms, but even though it is higher than conventional amplifiers, our electrodes provide high signal-to-noise recordings.
This is the device of choice for your high-resolution recordings of electrogenic tissues.
BioChip 4096E
The BioChip 4096E integrates 4096 electrodes on a 5.12mm x 5.12mm recording area centered in a 6mm x 6mm working area. This microelectrode array configuration is able to record from very large tissues at high spatial resolution. This device is also providing a uniformly distributed stimulation array of 16 electrodes. The recording electrode size is 21µm x 21µm and the electrode pitch is 81µm. The stimulation electrodes have the same size (21µm x 21µm) and they are uniformly interleaved over the recording area. The glass ring internal diameter is 25mm with a height of 5mm. The noise level of the circuit is of 26 µVrms, but even though it is higher than conventional amplifiers, our electrodes provide high signal-to-noise recordings.
This devices is suited for experimental paradigm based on electrical stimulation for both cell culture and electrogenic tissues. MEA BioChips come shipped in a handy and protective packaging.
BrainWave software
A complete software equipped with advanced tools dedicated to surf and grasp HD data content.
Navigation tools
Large-scale electrode array devices record data with a huge amount of information that might risk to be wasted without proper computational tools for visualizing, navigating and selecting the relevant events. BrainWave X offers several tools to simplify the management of high resolution data.
Visualization represents the first step when willing to grasp the undergoing activity. With the MEA Activity View tool, it is easy to customize the visualization to better suit the properties of your data. For example you can display either the Variation, the Amplitude or the Energy of the signal in a false-colour map and you can activate a series of settings to improve the contrast on the relevant activity. All this operation can be done in real-time as well as off-line. Whichever preparation you are measuring, our tools will allow you to properly highlight the electrophysiological events without missing any relevant signals in your experiment.
Thanks to several visualization parameters, it is possible to finely observe the spatial distribution of propagating activity patterns as well as picking up tiny isolated signals. Additionally, once you are done with a proper configuration you can directly export colour-coded activity movies to quickly shares them with your collaborators.
Real-time analysis
BrainWave X is capable to perform real-time analysis on 4096 channels thanks to the exploitation of modern multi-core hardware.
Online spike detection and data compression are only a few examples of what BrainWAve X can do in order to allow you recording long experimental sessions and save time in data analysis. Indeed, results can be available immediately after recording without need to perform off-line spike detection.
Data compression
Full raw data coming from high resolution MEAs can be cumbersome to manage unless you have access to sophisticated solution for storing big data.
The new BrainWave X offers different compression strategies to simplify the handling and the analysis of your data. For instance, you can take advantage of lossless compression to save disk space while allowing original raw data to be perfectly reconstructed. If this is not enough, you can opt for lossy compression by instructing BrainWave X on which percentage of the relevant signal should be preserved (signal masking) and consequently which portions of the noisy signal should be discarded (noise blanking).
And what makes everything even better is that all compression algorithms can be used in real-time directly on the data that you are recording !
Selection tools
The selection of channels has been improved to simplify your work while browsing data. Simply drag and drop over an area of interest within the array and BrainWave X will automatically select only the most active electrodes, thus saving your time.
Additionally, you can even select electrodes according to a given temporal statistic, such as the mean firing rate. Only electrode channels within the given range of values will be selected.
Finally, you can group electrodes to ease the manipulation of data and other operations such as graphical plotting and exporting.
Data format and export
BrainWave X stores all your data using HDF5 hierarchical data format (www.hdfgroup.org). This standard is an open-source, cross-platform, large data storage solution that has been adopted by the International Neuroinformatics Coordination Facility.
You can easily open any BRW- or BXR-file generated by BrainWave X within most operating systems (including Windows, Linux and Mac OS) and most used data analysis environments, such as, among others, Python, Matlab, Scilab, Octave and R.
BioCAM system
BioCAM X represents the next generation of microelectrode array systems.
Thanks to its high spatial and temporal resolution, BioCAM X brings unprecedented details to your experiments.
4096 x 18kHz
Originating from 3Brain’s expertise gained in the manufacturing of the first CMOS high-resolution multielectrode array, BioCam X will boost your research capabilities by enabling simultaneous recordings from a total of 4096 electrodes sampled at 18 kHz per electrode
You can either choose to store the entire raw signals captured by the BioCAM X or to take advantage of the several degrees of compression, which will allow you to save space, speed up data mining and thus decrease computational resources required for further data processing.
All-in-one
BioCAM X incorporates further optional functionalities in a compact and solid design, which come shipped as separate modules in most MEA-systems, such as a temperature control system and an electrical programmable current-driven stimulator.
Its compact form factor eases the integration with other instrumentation like microscopes, perfusion and patch-clamp systems, making the BioCAM a flexible tool for any experimental context.
BioCAM X can be interfaced with a laptop, allowing you to carry the entire recording system in your hand luggage.