brainrender

A user-friendly python library to create high-quality, 3D neuro-anatomical renderings combining data from publicly available brain atlases with user-generated experimental data.

   

From: Claudi et al. (2021) Visualizing anatomically registered data with brainrender. eLife

Documentation

brainrender is a project of the BrainGlobe Initiative, which is a collaborative effort to develop a suite of Python-based software tools for computational neuroanatomy. A comprehensive online documentation for brainrender can be found on the BrainGlobe website here.

Furthermore, an open-access journal article describing BrainRender has been published in eLife, available here.

Installation

From PyPI:

pip install brainrender

If you encounter any issues, please ask a question on the image.sc forum tagging your question with brainglobe.

Quickstart

import random

import numpy as np

from brainrender import Scene
from brainrender.actors import Points

def get_n_random_points_in_region(region, N):
    """
    Gets N random points inside (or on the surface) of a mesh
    """

    region_bounds = region.mesh.bounds()
    X = np.random.randint(region_bounds[0], region_bounds[1], size=10000)
    Y = np.random.randint(region_bounds[2], region_bounds[3], size=10000)
    Z = np.random.randint(region_bounds[4], region_bounds[5], size=10000)
    pts = [[x, y, z] for x, y, z in zip(X, Y, Z)]

    ipts = region.mesh.inside_points(pts).coordinates
    return np.vstack(random.choices(ipts, k=N))


# Display the Allen Brain mouse atlas.
scene = Scene(atlas_name="allen_mouse_25um", title="Cells in primary visual cortex")

# Display a brain region
primary_visual = scene.add_brain_region("VISp", alpha=0.2)

# Get a numpy array with (fake) coordinates of some labelled cells
coordinates = get_n_random_points_in_region(primary_visual, 2000)

# Create a Points actor
cells = Points(coordinates)

# Add to scene
scene.add(cells)

# Add label to the brain region
scene.add_label(primary_visual, "Primary visual cortex")

# Display the figure.
scene.render()

Citing brainrender

If you use BrainRender in your scientific work, please cite:

Claudi, F., Tyson, A. L., Petrucco, L., Margrie, T.W., Portugues, R.,  Branco, T. (2021) "Visualizing anatomically registered data with Brainrender&quot; <i>eLife</i> 2021;10:e65751 [doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65751](https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65751)

BibTeX:

@article{Claudi2021,
author = {Claudi, Federico and Tyson, Adam L. and Petrucco, Luigi and Margrie, Troy W. and Portugues, Ruben and Branco, Tiago},
doi = {10.7554/eLife.65751},
issn = {2050084X},
journal = {eLife},
pages = {1--16},
pmid = {33739286},
title = {{Visualizing anatomically registered data with brainrender}},
volume = {10},
year = {2021}
}

Contributing

Contributions to brainrender are more than welcome. Please see the developers guide. Note that some tests are only run locally, by specifying --runslow --runlocal in pytest.