APPENDIX 1 - MCA166-USB spectral data format
The MiniMCA spectral data format is in compliance with the IAEA SPE Spectral Data Format (see SPEDAC PRO User’s Manual
Rel. 1.0, IAEA, Feb 1994). All information is stored in a block structured ASCII BSA file so that its content can be viewed with any
text editor and the file content can be printed directly.
Each block of the file is identified by a string that starts with the dollar sign ($) and ends with a colon (:). The block name is case
sensitive. The structure of the data and the order in which blocks appear in the files is uniquely defined.
There are four general types of blocks used by the MiniMCA software (Release 1998):
1. Data Block
2. ROI information
3. Energy or Enrichment Calibration Data
4. Setup information
Data Block
FILE CONTENT EXPLANATION
$MCA_166_ID: Mini MCA module identification
SN# 5 Serial number
HW# 9503 Hardware version
FW# 9619 Firmware version
$SPEC_REM: Notes about the spectrum
Mini MCA (MCA166-USB) Remarks from the operator prompted before file save.
Spectrum measured in facility
C:\DATA\format.spe Original storage location of the file.
$DATE_MEA: Start date and time of the measurement.
12/31/1996 16:00:00 mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss
$MEAS_TIM: Spectrum measurement time in seconds
120 203 (lifetime, real-time)
$DATA: Spectral data
0 4095 First channel (i.e. 0) last channel(i.e. 4095)
0
. . . . Channel content
0
ROI Information
FILE CONTENT EXPLANATION
$ROI: ROI (Region of Interest)
1 Number of ROI’s
266 332 ROI start (i.e. 266) ROI begin (i.e. 332)
Energy Calibration Data
FILE CONTENT EXPLANATION
$ENER_FIT: Energy calibration coefficients
0.000000 0.393559 Offset and slope (KeV/channel)
$ENER_DATA: E-calibration data
2 n point calibration (in this case n=2)
0.000000 0.000000 Channel energy pair (lower)
2981.000000 1173.199951 Channel energy pair (higher)
