Foqus: a FORTRAN program for the quantitative analysis of x-ray spectra from thin biological specimens.

An online FORTRAN program for the quantitative analysis of energy dispersive X-ray spectra from thin biological specimens is presented. The methods of background suppression by digital filtering and peak deconvolution by linear least-squares fitting with measured peak profiles are used. The continuum quantitation method for spectra from thin biological sections as proposed by Hall is applied. The performance of the computer program, utilizing the facilities of a disk operating system, is demonstrated. The routines were optimized for speed, resulting in a run-time of less than 5 seconds on a 16 bit minicomputer for a full quantitation for 7 elements of an energy dispersive thin section X-ray spectrum, including an optional absorption correction. Since no assembly language subroutines are implemented, the restrictions for the use of the program with different computer systems are minimized.