Future plans and contributions

Future plans

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the features that we are currently working on, and that should make it into future releases of the software

Handling several file format

In future releases, we hope to provide an abstraction layer for handling different file formats, in order to simplify the workflows. By default, in 0.4 versions, the code can only handle raw binary data structures. However, it would be rather easy to deal with HDF5 structured files. The only problem is that HDF5, by default, does not allow concurrent writes in parallel, such that the filtering step can not be distributed on several nodes. But the abstraction layer will allow users to define their own file format, and thus make the code compatible with most common file formats.

Real Time spike sorting

This is the most chalenging task, and we are thinking about what is the best way to properly implement it. Such a real-time spike sorting for dense arrays is within reach, but several challenges need to be adressed to make it possible. Data will be read from memory streams, and templates will be updated on-the-fly. The plan is to have spatio-temporal templates tracking cells over time, at a cost of a small temporal lag that can not be avoided because of the template-matching step.

Better, faster, stronger

GPU kernels should be optimized to increase the speed of the algorithm, and we are always seeking for optimizations along the road. For Real-Time spike sorting, if we want it to be accurate for thousands of channels, any optimizations is welcome.

Contributions

If you have ideas, or if you want to contribute to the software, with the same idea that we should develop a proper and unified framework for semi-automated spike sorting, please do not hesitate to contact pierre.yger@inserm.fr . Currently, the code itself is not properly documented, as our main focus was to first get a stable working algorithm. Now that this goal is achieved, we can dive more into software development and enhance its modularity.