Section: Neuroscience
Topic: Neuroscience

Power Pixels: a turnkey pipeline for processing of Neuropixel recordings

Meijer, Guido T.1 orcid ; Battaglia, Francesco P.1 orcid
1Donders Centre for Neuroscience, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Corresponding author(s): Meijer, Guido T. (guido.meijer@donders.ru.nl)

10.24072/pcjournal.679 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article no. e12

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There are many open-source tools available for the processing of neuronal data acquired using Neuropixels probes. Each of these tools, focuses on a part of the process from raw data to single neuron activity. For example, SpikeInterface is an incredibly useful Python module for pre-processing and spike sorting of individual recordings. However, there are more steps in between raw data and spikes, such as synchronization of spike times between probes and histological reconstruction of probe insertions. Therefore, we developed Power Pixels, combining the functionality of several packages into one integrated pipeline, which may be run in any lab workflow. It includes pre-processing, spike sorting, neuron-level quality control metrics, synchronization between multiple probes, compression of raw data, and ephys-to-histology alignment. Integrating all these steps into one pipeline greatly simplifies Neuropixels data processing, especially for novel users who might struggle to find their way around all the available code and tools.

Published online:
DOI: 10.24072/pcjournal.679
Type: Research article
Keywords: Neuropixel, silicon probe, pipeline, pre-processing, standardization

Meijer, Guido T.  1 ; Battaglia, Francesco P.  1

1 Donders Centre for Neuroscience, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
License: CC-BY 4.0
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights
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Meijer, G. T.; Battaglia, F. P. Power Pixels: a turnkey pipeline for processing of Neuropixel recordings. Peer Community Journal, Volume 6 (2026), article  no. e12. https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.679

PCI peer reviews and recommendation, and links to data, scripts, code and supplementary information: 10.24072/pci.neuro.100228

Conflict of interest of the recommender and peer reviewers:
The recommender in charge of the evaluation of the article and the reviewers declared that they have no conflict of interest (as defined in the code of conduct of PCI) with the authors or with the content of the article.

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