CSIDRS: developing a community software for stable isotope data reduction from the CAMECA LG SIMS.

Abstract

Secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements of stable isotopes have been used in the geosciences since the 1980s. Underlying these stable isotopes results is the data reduction process used to calculate delta, and sometimes Delta values, from raw measurement data. This data reduction process, usually entailing a set of well-established corrections, is often carried out using excel spreadsheets, in-house programs or programs which do only partial corrections. CSIDRS is the first open-source software which performs all the following corrections: detector background, yield and dead-time corrections, a drift correction and instrumental mass fractionation using a reference material as well as presenting the results in an easy to visualise manner. CSIDRS presents a series of quality check graphs of the final data as well as visualising raw cycle data. Additionally, CSIDRS uses Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation, increasing the accuracy of uncertainty propagation and uses an updated method for the automatic removal of outliers in order to account for skew in the count data. CSIDRS is designed as an open-source program to be both used by the community and developed by the community.