Welcome Window¶

The Welcome Window is the first window that you are presented with when you launch Mesmerize.

Use the large buttons for opening new Viewer or Flowchart windows.
Open a project using the button, or double-click a recent project from the list.
Create a new project using the button.
You basically have access to all objects in the Mesmerize instance through this console.

Project Structure¶

A Mesmerize project is encapsulated within a single directory. It contains the following:

config file - contains configuration data, such as roi type columns, stimulus type columns, and custom columns with their datatypes.

Warning

Do not manually modify the config file

Directories

Dir	Purpose
dataframes	Contains an file storing the project dataframe, root.dfr, and backups. A new backup is created every time a a new Sample is added to the project. Restore a backup by renaming it to “root.dfr”.
images	Contains the image sequences and work environment data for all samples in the project
curves	Contains the curves for every sample in the project
batches	Used for storing batches used by the Batch Manager if you wish.
flowcharts	Used for storing .fc flowchart files that save the layout of nodes in a flowchart.
plots	Used for storing .ptrn interactive plot files.

Consoles¶

A Python console is embedded in many parts of Mesmerize. You can use it to perform very specific operations, further automate tasks, save an analysis object, format plots, etc.

The console is accessible in many windows through View -> Console. Within the console namespace this refers to the window. For example this refers to the Project Browser Window instance in the Project Browser’s console. A list of useful object references and helper functions are listed when you open most consoles.

You can run entire scripts within the console. You can also use import statements to import libraries that you have in your Python environment.

Keyboard controls:

Execute: Shift + Enter

New line: Enter

Scroll up through history: Page Up

Scroll down through history: Page Down

The history is stored in ~/.mesmerize

Saving plots¶

Some plots allow you to save them in an interactive form, along with the plot data and the plot state as a “.ptrn” file. If you save the file in the “plots” directory of your project it will be listed in the Welcome Window when you open your project.

This is currently possible with the following plots: Heatmap, KShape, Proportions, Scatter, and SpaceMap

Plot Navbar¶

Many plots have a navigation toolbar which you can use to zoom, pan, configure plots, and export plots as images.

Official matplotlib docs about the navigation toolbar: https://matplotlib.org/2.1.2/users/navigation_toolbar.html

Home: Reset the plot (not applicable for all plots)

Pan: Pan the plot

Zoom: Zoom in/out a selection using the left/right mouse button respectively

Subplot-configuration: Options to adjust spacing, borders, set tight layout.

Edit axis, curve…: For some plots. Options for formating x & y axis limits, labels, select line style, color, etc.

Save: Export the figure as an image. This is not the same as saving an interactive plot, see “Saving Plots” above.

System Configuration¶

Set system configuration options

This window is accessible through the Welcome Window menubar at Configuration -> System Configuration.

Maximum number of threads to use: The maximum number of threads that Mesmerize is allowed to use, this includes proccesses started by the Batch Manager, various analysis proccesses in the flowchart, and the viewer as well.

Python call: Many parts of Mesmerize, such as the Batch Manager use external processes to run a python script. This setting sets which python call should be used. python3 should work for Linux & Mac OSX. We’ve found that this needs to be set to python to work within Anaconda environments on Windows.

Use CUDA: Use CUDA accerlation if you have a GPU with CUDA cores. You must have pycuda and scikit-cuda (as well as the nvidia CUDA toolkit) installed. CUDA accerlation isn’t used much currently.

Work dir: Many parts of Mesmerize use a working directory for temporary files. If you have a fast filesystem you can use that for this purpose.

Pre-run commands (large text entry): Mesmerize runs some computationally intensive tasks in subprocesses. These commands are run prior to the python script that performs the task.

If you are using Mesmerize in a virtual environment or conda environment you will need activate the environment so you must include the line source /path_to_venv/bin/activate or conda activate <env_name> to the pre-run commands.

If you are using an Intel CPU you should get optimal performance by installing Math Kernel Library (MKL) and including export MKL_NUM_THREADS=1 to the pre-run commands.

If you are using an AMD CPU make sure you have OpenBLAS installed for optimal performance and include export OPENBLAS_NUM_THREADS=1 to the pre-run commands. You may better performance by installing the AMD specific libraries.

Plugins directory: If you have a plugins dir include enter its path here.