Site Footprint
Hardware
The site footprint is the area of the rectangle the electrode sites span — site span width times site span depth — in square millimetres; it is the cross-section of tissue a design covers, and it is not the area of an individual site.
The two are easily confused because both are called site area in places: a single site's pad is measured in square micrometres and is under site area; the footprint of the whole field is measured in square millimetres and is this term.
The footprint is the denominator of site density and the plane that neural interface volume extends into three dimensions. It is what to match against a structure's cross-section: a single-shank linear design has a footprint that is all depth and almost no width, a four-shank design at 200 µm covers 0.6 mm by its span, and a surface grid's footprint is the patch of cortex or skull it rests on. It follows from site span and site span width and has no field of its own in a probe name.
Typical values
| Definition | site span (width) × site span (depth) |
|---|---|
| Not to be confused with | site area, one site's pad in µm² |
| Design-space parameter | Site footprint (siteAreaMm2) |