October 8, 2021

Software for mineral identification using Raman spectroscopy

At various times I have been fortunate enough to be able to use the Raman device at the University of Arizona mineralogy lab.

The Raman machine collects a spectra and saves it to a file. The game then is to use that data to identify the mineral.

A program was written in 1993 (over 25 years ago!) in Fortran 90. This program is called "Crystal Sleuth" and runs on Windows systems (and Windows systems only).

I thought it would be interesting, and perhaps useful to write a program that performs the same functions using the Python language. For lack of a better name, I am calling this "Turbo Sleuth".

This project pretty much fizzled (i.e. died) in 2022 when the Raman unit broke for good.
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Mineralogy Info / [email protected]