VACTIV: A graphical dialog based program for an automatic processing of line and band spectra Original Research Article

The program VACTIV–Visual ACTIV–has been developed for an automatic analysis of spectrum-like distributions, in particular gamma-ray spectra or alpha-spectra and is a standard graphical dialog based Windows XX application, driven by a menu, mouse and keyboard. On the one hand, it was a conversion of an existing Fortran program ACTIV [1] to the DELPHI language; on the other hand, it is a transformation of the sequential syntax of Fortran programming to a new object-oriented style, based on the organization of event interactions. New features implemented in the algorithms of both the versions consisted in the following • as peak model both an analytical function and a graphical curve could be used; • the peak search algorithm was able to recognize not only Gauss peaks but also peaks with an irregular form; both narrow peaks (2–4 channels) and broad ones (50–100 channels); • the regularization technique in the fitting guaranteed a stable solution in the most complicated cases of strongly overlapping or weak peaks. The graphical dialog interface of VACTIV is much more convenient than the batch mode of ACTIV. [1] V.B. Zlokazov, Computer Physics Communications, 28 (1982) 27–37.