VSHEC—A program for the automatic spectrum calibration

Calibration is the transformation of the output channels of a measuring device into the physical values (energies, times, angles, etc.). If dealt with manually, it is a labor- and time-consuming procedure even if only a few detectors are used. However, the situation changes appreciably if a calibration of multi-detector systems is required, where the number of registering devices extends to hundreds (Tsyganov et al. (2004) [1]). The calibration is aggravated by the fact that needed pivotal channel numbers should be determined from peak-like distributions. But peak distribution is an informal pattern so that a procedure of pattern recognition should be employed to discard the operator interference. The automatic calibration is the determination of the calibration curve parameters on the basis of reference quantity list and the data which partially are characterized by these quantities (energies, angles, etc).The program allows the physicist to perform the calibration of the spectrometric detectors for both the cases: that of one tract and that of many.Program summaryProgram title: VSHECCatalogue identifier: AENN_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AENN_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen’s University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Standard CPC licence, http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/licence/licence.htmlNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 6403No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 325847Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: DELPHI-5 and higher.Computer: Any IBM PC compatible.Operating system: Windows XX.Classification: 2.3, 4.9.Nature of problem:Automatic conversion of detector channels into their energy equivalents.Solution method:Automatic decomposition of a spectrum into geometric figures such as peaks and an envelope of peaks from below, estimation of peak centers and search for the maximum peak center subsequence which matches the reference energies in the statistically most plausible way.Running time:On Celeron (R) (CPU 2.66 GHh) it is the time needed for the dialog via the visual interface. Pure computation—less than 1 s for the test run.