Release notes

Current version is phy v2.0b1 (beta 1) (7 Feb 2020).

New views

  • Cluster scatter view: a scatter plot of all clusters, on two user-defined dimensions (for example, depth vs firing rate). The marker size and colors can also depend on two additional user-defined dimensions.

  • Raster view: spike trains of all clusters

  • Template view: template waveforms of all clusters

  • Cluster statistics views (histograms):

    • ISI
    • Instantaneous firing rate
    • Write your own as a plugin

  • Spike attributes views: a scatter view is automatically created for every spike_somename.npy containing 1D or 2D values per spike

  • Trace image view: a minimal trace view that shows a large textured image (n_channels, n_samples) instead of multiple polylines.

  • Improved Amplitude view: different types of spike amplitudes as a function of time, with histograms.

  • IPython view: interact with the GUI and the data programmatically.

New features

  • Split clusters in the amplitude view or in the template feature view, in addition to the feature view
  • Cluster view:
    • Dynamically filter the list of clusters based on cluster metrics and labels (using JavaScript syntax)
    • Snippets to quickly sort and filter clusters
    • New default columns: mean firing rate, and template waveform amplitude
    • The styling can be customized with CSS in a plugin (see plugin examples in the documentation)
  • Amplitude view:
    • Show an histogram of amplitudes overlayed with the amplitudes
    • Support for multiple types of amplitudes (template waveform amplitude, raw waveform amplitude, feature amplitude)
    • Splitting is supported
    • Alt+click in the amplitude view to center the trace view to a certain time (position shown with the vertical yellow bar)
    • Show the time interval currenty displayed in the trace view as a vertical yellow bar
  • Correlogram view:
    • Horizontal line for the baseline firing rate
    • Customizable vertical line for the refractory period
  • Waveform view:
    • Change the number of waveforms directly from the GUI
    • Higher-quality thicker mean and template waveforms
  • Feature view:
    • One can now change the specification of the subplots in a plugin
  • All views:
    • Add multiple views of the same type
    • Closable views
    • View menu
    • Toggle automatic update of views upon cluster selection
    • Easily take screenshots of individual views
    • Control bar at the top of every view, with customizable text and buttons (screenshot, toggle auto update, etc.)
    • Axes (in most views)
    • Higher-quality text with OpenGL
    • Control+wheel to change the scaling (in most views)
    • Alt+wheel to change the marker size
    • Change the number of "best" channels in the user configuration file
  • Trace view:
    • Auto-update by default
  • Trace view, raster view, template view:
    • Customizable color mapping for clusters based on any cluster metrics or labels
  • Probe view:
    • Channel labels
  • Template model
    • Support multiple raw data files (virtually concatenated)
    • Support for multiple channel shanks: add a channel_shanks.npy file with shape (n_channels, ), with the shank integer index of every channel.

Improvements

  • A new file cluster_info.tsv is automatically saved, containing all information from the cluster view.
  • Minimal high-level data access API in the Template Model
  • Improved performance, avoid blocking the GUI when loading large amounts of data
  • Fix scaling issues in waveform view
  • More efficient probe view
  • Slightly different gray colors for noise and MUA clusters in the cluster view
  • Menu reorganization
  • Toolbar with icons
  • Bug fixes with cluster labels
  • New plugins/ folder in the repository, with many plugin examples
  • Documentation rewritten from scratch, with many examples

Internal changes

  • Support Python 3.7+, dropped Python 2.x support (reached End Of Life)
  • Updated to PyQt5 from PyQt4, which is now unsupported
  • Improved OpenGL-based plotting API (based on a fork of glumpy instead of vispy)
  • Dropped the phy-contrib repository
  • Created phylib, a small dependency with I/O code and non-graphical utilities, also used by ibllib
  • Moved the phy GitHub repository from kwikteam to cortex-lab organization

Notes for plugin maintainers

The following changes may affect phy plugins:

  • The add_view and view_actions_created events have been removed.
  • You should now use the new event view_attached(view, gui) that is emitted when a view is attached to the GUI.

[coming soon] Upcoming features

  • Support for events: PSTH view, trial-based raster plots, etc.
  • More efficient GPU-based plotting