Manipulating Spectra with DTSA-II

Abstract

The previous article in this series introduced DTSA-II and provided some background information including how to configure DTSA-II for your x-ray detector and how to read spectra from disk. This article presents more basic background material. It discusses how to display and perform basic manipulations on spectra including reading the contextual properties of spectra, visualizing spectra, labeling characteristic x-ray lines, and exporting the results as publication-quality graphics. You are encouraged to follow along using DTSA-II and example spectra, which may be downloaded for free from http://www.cstl.nist.gov/div837/837.02/epq/dtsa2/index.html or equivalently http://goo.gl/MI1Ku . With this background material, we will be ready to consider more sophisticated tasks like spectrum quantification and simulation in upcoming articles.