Hardware-accelerated Interactive Data Visualization for Neuroscience in Python

Large datasets are becoming more and more common in science, particularly in neuroscience where experimental techniques are rapidly evolving. Obtaining interpretable results from raw data can sometimes be done automatically; however, there are numerous situations where there is a need, at all processing stages, to visualize the data in an interactive way. This enables the scientist to gain intuition, discover unexpected patterns, and find guidance about subsequent analysis steps. Existing visualization tools mostly focus on static publication-quality figures and do not support interactive visualization of large datasets. While working on Python software for visualization of neurophysiological data, we developed techniques to leverage the computational power of modern graphics cards for high-performance interactive data visualization. We were able to achieve very high performance despite the interpreted and dynamic nature of Python, by using state-of-the-art, fast libraries such as NumPy, PyOpenGL, and PyTables. We present applications of these methods to visualization of neurophysiological data. We believe our tools will be useful in a broad range of domains, in neuroscience and beyond, where there is an increasing need for scalable and fast interactive visualization.