Electrical vs Optical Cell Stimulation: A Communication Perspective

Over the recent years, an increasing amount of research effort has been directed toward the development and optimization of optical cell stimulation (OCS) techniques, while electrical cell stimulation (ECS) has been perfected. This article investigates the existing ECS and OCS methods from a communication perspective and, after summarizing the main breakthroughs in both fields, introduces a novel system model that treats the stimulation as a communication process. Additionally, we discuss the main particularities of ECS and OCS models and conduct a comparative analysis that quantifies the performance of the aforementioned methods based on suitable engineering metrics such as average latency, power consumption, transmission distance, as well as stimulation frequency, pulse width, and amplitude. Finally, future research directions emerge from the provided insightful discussion.