DigitalSurf format (SUR & PRO)#

The .sur and .pro files are a format developed by the digitalsurf company to handle various types of scientific measurements data such as profilometer, SEM, AFM, RGB(A) images, multilayer surfaces and profiles. Even though it is essentially a surfaces format, 1D signals are supported for spectra and spectral maps. Specifically, this file format is used by Attolight SA for its scanning electron microscope cathodoluminescence (SEM-CL) hyperspectral maps. Metadata parsing is supported, including user-specific metadata, as well as the loading of files containing multiple objects packed together.

The plugin was developed based on the MountainsMap software documentation, which contains a description of the binary format.

API functions#

rsciio.digitalsurf.file_reader(filename, **kwds)#

Read a mountainsmap .sur file and return a dictionnary containing the information necessary for creating the data object. :param filename: Filename of the file to read or corresponding pathlib.Path. :type filename: str, pathlib.Path :param lazy: Whether to open the file lazily or not. :type lazy: bool, Default=False

Returns:

List of dictionaries containing the following fields:

  • ’data’ – multidimensional numpy array

  • ’axes’ – list of dictionaries describing the axes containing the fields ‘name’, ‘units’, ‘index_in_array’, and either ‘size’, ‘offset’, and ‘scale’ or a numpy array ‘axis’ containing the full axes vector

  • ’metadata’ – dictionary containing the parsed metadata

  • ’original_metadata’ – dictionary containing the full metadata tree from the input file

Return type:

list of dicts