IPFX vs AllenSDK

Technical
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1

Hello

I would like to ask whether those who are interested in electrophysiology feature extraction from the cells in the database are recommended to switch from Allen SDK to ipfx.

  1. Also, what are the main differences between the two?
  2. Do they share the same code when it comes to electrophysiology feature extraction?
  3. Will one of them be no longer supported, or is it already so?

Thanks in advance

2

Yes, IPFX is the more recent, actively developed version of the intracellular electrophysiology feature analysis code. The original code was released as part of the Allen SDK, but it was later migrated to its own package (IPFX) as additional features were added.

The core analysis functions are similar, but IPFX has seen more development. One note is that Allen SDK still works with the older NWB v1 files that are part of the original Cell Types Database, while IPFX works with the NWB v2 files that are used for the more recent Patch-seq data (though there is also a tagged version of IPFX that is compatible with NWB v1).

I don’t think there are official plans to deprecate the ephys feature parts of Allen SDK, but I would definitely use IPFX instead of Allen SDK for new work.