NWB (Neurodata Without Borders)

NWB (Neurodata Without Borders) is the open standard file format for neurophysiology data: one file holds the recording, the electrode geometry, the stimulus and the subject metadata, so a dataset stays interpretable after the software that made it has changed.

Radiens reads and writes NWB. It opens NWB files natively with no conversion step, and it writes or converts any recording to NWB, alongside the vendor formats it reads natively (Intan, SpikeGLX, Open Ephys, TDT, Plexon). At the start of a study, data recorded elsewhere is read without a translation stage; at the end, a deposit-ready file is written rather than assembled. NWB is the mechanism by which Radiens data are FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable); an acquisition system's own format is faster to write and harder to read years later.

The electrode geometry in the file comes from the probe model, which is native in Radiens for NeuroNexus, SiNAPS and Neuropixels probes and is built with the model builder for other electrodes; the recording itself is a trial.