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iSpectra: An Open Source Toolbox For The Analysis of Spectral Images Recorded on Scanning Electron Microscopes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2015

Christian Liebske
Christian Liebske*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, ETH Zürich, Sonneggstrasse 5, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
*
*Corresponding author. christian.liebske@erdw.ethz.ch
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Abstract

iSpectra is an open source and system-independent toolbox for the analysis of spectral images (SIs) recorded on energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) systems attached to scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). The aim of iSpectra is to assign pixels with similar spectral content to phases, accompanied by cumulative phase spectra with superior counting statistics for quantification. Pixel-to-phase assignment starts with a threshold-based pre-sorting of spectra to create groups of pixels with identical elemental budgets, similar to a method described by van Hoek (2014). Subsequent merging of groups and re-assignments of pixels using elemental or principle component histogram plots enables the user to generate chemically and texturally plausible phase maps. A variety of standard image processing algorithms can be applied to groups of pixels to optimize pixel-to-phase assignments, such as morphology operations to account for overlapping excitation volumes over pixels located at phase boundaries. iSpectra supports batch processing and allows pixel-to-phase assignments to be applied to an unlimited amount of SIs, thus enabling phase mapping of large area samples like petrographic thin sections.

Keywords

energy-dispersive spectroscopyspectral imagingphase mappingscanning electron microscopyimage morphology
Type
Materials Applications and Techniques
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , August 2015 , pp. 1006 - 1016
Copyright
© Microscopy Society of America 2015 

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