A Framework for the Comparative Assessment of Neuronal Spike Sorting Algorithms towards More Accurate Off-Line and On-Line Microelectrode Arrays Data Analysis

Table 1

Overview of spike sorting algorithms.

Reference	Feature extraction	Clustering
Letelier and Weber [14]	Wavelet	Fuzzy--means
Harris et al. [15]	PCA	Expectation maximization
Zouridakis and Tam [16]	Waveforms	Fuzzy--means
Hulata et al. [17]	Wavelet	-means
Egert et al. [18]	PCA	Manual cluster cutting
Shoham et al. [19]	PCA	Expectation maximization
Quiroga et al. [20]	Wavelet packet coefficients	Superparamagnetic clustering
Rutishauser et al. [11]	—	Template matching
Cho et al. [21]	LDA	Fuzzy--means
Adamos et al. [22]	PCA	Expectation maximization
Awais and Andrew [23]	Zero crossing	-means
Biffi et al. [24]	PCA	Hierarchical clustering
Takekawa et al. [25]	Wavelet	Bayes
Gibson et al. [13]	Discrete derivative	Fuzzy--means
Cheng et al. [26, 27]	PCA	Density-based clustering
Liu et al. [28]	PCA	Valley-seeking
Lai et al. [29]	Wavelet	Gray relation analysis
Bestel et al. [4]	PCA, wavelet, geometrical features	Expectation maximization
Yuan et al. [12]	Wavelet	-means, template matching
Oliynyk et al. [30]	PCA	Fuzzy--means
Kwon et al. [31]	DWT, PCA, peak-to-peak	Expectation maximization, -means, fuzzy--means, manual cluster cutting
Englitz et al. [32]	Geometrical features	1D clustering
Paraskevopoulou et al. [33]	FSDE	-means
Nick et al. [34]	PCA, DWT, geometrical features	Expectation maximization
MCRack (Multi Channel Systems GmbH)	—	Manual amplitude window
Spike2 (Cambridge Electronic Design Ltd.)	PCA	Template matching; Manual cluster-cutting, -means, Gaussian mixture models
Off-Line Sorter (Plexon Inc.)	PCA	Expectation maximization, -means, valley-seeking

Overview of the literature about spike sorting algorithms, including published papers about methods, custom toolboxes, and commercial software. Custom toolbox available to the community. Software coupled to a commercial acquisition platform. Principal component analysis. Linear Discriminant Analysis. Discrete Wavelet Transform. On-line mode. Keywords used for literature search were “spike sorting”, “spike detection”, “spike classification”, “in vitro”, “real time/on-line”, “Microelectrode arrays”, and “toolbox” (PubMed and Google Scholar).