An auto-adaptive background subtraction method for Raman spectra

Background subtraction is a crucial step in the preprocessing of Raman spectrum. Usually, parameter manipulating of the background subtraction method is necessary for the efficient removal of the background, which makes the quality of the spectrum empirically dependent. In order to avoid artificial bias, we proposed an auto-adaptive background subtraction method without parameter adjustment. The main procedure is: (1) select the local minima of spectrum while preserving major peaks, (2) apply an interpolation scheme to estimate background, (3) and design an iteration scheme to improve the adaptability of background subtraction. Both simulated data and Raman spectra have been used to evaluate the proposed method. By comparing the backgrounds obtained from three widely applied methods: the polynomial, the Baek's and the airPLS, the auto-adaptive method meets the demand of practical applications in terms of efficiency and accuracy.