Remod

Remod offers a friendly collection of command line tools for analysing and tweaking neuronal morphologies stored in the SWC format. Whether you want detailed statistics or structural edits, Remod helps you measure, modify and visualise your neurons.

Features

• Parse SWC files to compute branch point counts, branch order distributions, lengths, surface areas and Sholl measurements.
• Automatically save all aggregated statistics in downloads/statistics/.
• Remodel morphologies with remod_cli.py edit by removing, shrinking, extending, branching or scaling dendrites. Pick dendrites manually or randomly and adjust radii as needed.
• Node indices are renumbered automatically after editing.
• Visualise original and edited trees using the export helpers in file_io.py for individual plots or overlays.
• Summarise multiple runs with plot_statistics.py using the simple or smart commands.

Installation

Requires Python 3.10 or later with NumPy and Matplotlib:

pip install numpy matplotlib

Using a virtual environment is recommended but not required.

Quick start

1. Prepare SWC files – place your .swc files in a directory (see examples under swc_files/).

2. Compute statistics – run remod_cli.py analyze on the directory with a comma separated list of file names:

   python remod_cli.py analyze /path/to/swc 0-2.swc

   Results such as total dendritic length, branch point counts and Sholl intersections are written to downloads/statistics/.

   To get the statistics in a single JSON file without intermediate text files, use json_stats.py:

   python json_stats.py /path/to/swc 0-2.swc

3. Edit morphologies – remod_cli.py edit applies structural changes. The following removes 50% of all terminal dendrites from 0-2.swc and writes the result to downloads/files/0-2_new.swc:

   python remod_cli.py edit \
      --directory /path/to/swc \
      --file-name 0-2.swc \
      --who all_terminal \
      --action remove \
      --hm-choice percent \
      --amount 50 \
      --var-choice percent \
      --radius-change 10

   Other actions include shrink, extend, branch and scale. Choose dendrites randomly via --random-ratio or specify them with --manual-dendrites.

4. Visualise – use the helpers in file_io.py to generate 3‑D plots or overlays. plot_statistics.py builds summary graphs from downloads/statistics/; add --average or --compare for group averages or comparisons. Figures are saved in the downloads/ directory.

Workflow

A typical pipeline looks like this:

1. Analyse – remod_cli.py analyze records baseline statistics in downloads/statistics/.
2. Modify – remod_cli.py edit performs the chosen remodeling operations and saves results in downloads/files/.
3. Reassign indices – node indices are automatically renumbered after modifications.
4. Visualise and plot – generate 3‑D views and overlays with file_io.py and produce summary plots via plot_statistics.py.
5. Combine statistics – use plot_statistics.py with simple or smart to merge and compare runs.

More tools

• swc_parser.py also provides index_reassign to renumber nodes after editing.
• core_utils.py offers weighted dendrite sampling utilities and warning helpers.
• remodeling_actions.py implements the remodeling operations.
• Plotting and merging functionality resides in plot_statistics.py.
• swc_parser.py exposes an SWCParser class wrapping the original parse_swc_file function.
• logger_utils.py contains a small MarkdownLogger for logs.
• core_utils.py collects CLI parsers in the CLIParsers class.
• Common file helpers live under FileIO in file_io.py.
• Morphometric functions are grouped in MorphologyStats.
• json_stats.py exports a StatisticsComputer for JSON output.
• Plotting helpers are accessible via the StatisticsPlotter class.
• The main entry points reside in RemodCLI within remod_cli.py.
• Remodeling actions are available through the RemodelActions class.

Run any script with the --help flag to see its command line options.