SIMBSIG: similarity search and clustering for biobank-scale data
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Updated: Aug 15, 2025

Biobank for Translational Medicine: Standard Operating Procedures for Optimal Sample Management
Published on: November 30, 2022
Michael F Adamer1,2, Eljas Roellin1, Lucie Bourguignon3
1Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zurich, 4058 Basel, Switzerland.
Summary:
In many modern bioinformatics applications, such as statistical genetics, or single-cell analysis, one frequently encounters datasets which are orders of magnitude too large for conventional in-memory analysis. To tackle this challenge, we introduce SIMBSIG (SIMmilarity Batched Search Integrated GPU), a highly scalable Python package which provides a scikit-learn-like interface for out-of-core, GPU-enabled similarity searches, principal component analysis and clustering. Due to the PyTorch backend, it is highly modular and particularly tailored to many data types with a particular focus on biobank data analysis.
Availability And Implementation:
SIMBSIG is freely available from PyPI and its source code and documentation can be found on GitHub (https://github.com/BorgwardtLab/simbsig) under a BSD-3 license.
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