Stimfit

Introduction

Stimfit is a free, fast and simple program for viewing and analyzing electrophysiological data. It's currently available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It features an embedded Python shell that allows you to extend the program functionality by using numerical libraries such as NumPy and SciPy. A standalone Python module for file i/o that doesn't depend on the graphical user interface is also available.

Supported file types

• Read/write: CFS binary data, HDF5 files, Axon text files, ASCII files
• Read-only: Axon binary files versions 1 and 2 (pClamp 9 and 10, *.abf), Axograph files (*.axgd, *.axgx), HEKA files (*.dat, from version 0.10)
• Write-only: Igor binary waves (*.ibw)

Support for other file types may be implemented upon request.

Building and installing

Windows and OS X

Binary installers for Mac OS X and Windows are available here. On Windows, the installer includes the python-stfio standalone module. On Mac OS X, this optional module has to be built from source.

GNU/Linux

stimfit and python-stfio have been part of Ubuntu's repositories since oneiric/11.10. All you need to to is $ sudo apt-get install stimfit python-stfio. Packages for Debian (squeeze, sid) and Ubuntu (jaunty, lucid, maverick) can also be obtained from the Debian Neuroscience Repository, and there's a bleeding-edge ppa for Ubuntu on launchpad. See here for instructions.

Build from source

The source code for the latest release can be obtained from this ppa. José Guzman has contributed building instructions for GNU/Linux, which are part of the documentation. Build instructions for OS X can be found here.

Questions and comments can be posted to the Google group.