SAN plot: A graphical representation of the signal, noise, and artifacts content of spectra

The signal-to-noise ratio is an important property of NMR spectra. It allows to compare the sensitivity of experiments, the performance of hardware, etc. Its measurement is usually done in a rudimentary manner involving manual operation of selecting separately a region of the spectrum with signal and noise, respectively, applying some operation and returning the signal-to-noise ratio. We introduce here a simple method based on the analysis of the distribution of point intensities in one- and two-dimensional spectra. The signal/artifact/noise plots, (SAN plots) allows one to present in a graphical manner qualitative and quantitative information about spectra. It will be shown that besides me…