brisc#

brisc brisc

brisc is a high-performance library for analyzing single-cell data at scale. It prioritizes running as fast as possible on multi-core CPU systems, strict reproducibility, and a clean, user-friendly interface. On datasets of 1 to 20 million cells, it cuts the runtime of common workflows from hours to minutes. Get started.

Blazing fast

Achieved through ground-up optimization of core algorithms and effective parallelism.

Deterministic

Every step gives floating-point identical results between runs, for any number of threads.

Complete toolkit

Preprocessing, dimensionality reduction, harmonization, label transfer, clustering, embedding, pseudobulk DE, and plotting.

Interoperable

Read and write .h5ad, .rds, .h5Seurat, and 10x files; interleave Python and R analyses via ryp without intermediate writes to disk.

Memory-efficient

~2× lower peak memory usage than Scanpy by tracking cells that pass QC instead of subsetting.

User-friendly

Sensible defaults, strict type-checking, and solution-focused error messages.

Performance · 10M cells · Parse Biosciences PBMC
192 CPUs, 755 GB RAM
Basic workflow
from brisc import SingleCell

sc = SingleCell('data.h5ad')\
  .qc()\
  .hvg(batch_column='sample')\
  .normalize()\
  .pca()\
  .neighbors()\
  .shared_neighbors()\
  .cluster(resolution=[0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2])\
  .pacmap()
Label transfer
from brisc import SingleCell

sc_ref = SingleCell('data_ref.h5ad').qc()
sc_query = SingleCell('data_query.h5ad').qc()
sc_ref, sc_query = sc_ref.hvg(sc_query)
sc_ref = sc_ref.normalize()
sc_query = sc_query.normalize()
sc_ref, sc_query = sc_ref.pca(sc_query)
sc_ref, sc_query = sc_ref.harmonize(sc_query)
sc_query = sc_query.label_transfer_from(
  sc_ref, 'cell_type',
  cell_type_column='cell_type_transferred')
Pseudobulk differential expression
from brisc import SingleCell

pb = SingleCell('data.h5ad')\
  .qc()\
  .pseudobulk('sample', 'cell_type')
de = pb\
  .qc('condition')\
  .DE('~ condition + sex + pmi',
      group='condition',
      categorical_columns=['condition', 'sex'])