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 measuring signal and noise levels, SAN plots are also quite useful to visualize and compare artifacts within a series of spectra. Some basic properties of the SAN plots are illustrated with simple application.