The Signal class#

Warning

This subsection can be a bit confusing for beginners. Do not worry if you do not understand it all.

HyperSpy stores the data in the BaseSignal class, that is the object that you get when e.g. you load a single file using load(). Most of the data analysis functions are also contained in this class or its specialized subclasses. The BaseSignal class contains general functionality that is available to all the subclasses. The subclasses provide functionality that is normally specific to a particular type of data, e.g. the Signal1D class provides common functionality to deal with one-dimensional (e.g. spectral) data and exspy.signals.EELSSpectrum (which is a subclass of Signal1D) adds extra functionality to the Signal1D class for electron energy-loss spectroscopy data analysis.

A signal store other objects in what are called attributes. For examples, the data is stored in a numpy array in the data attribute, the original parameters in the original_metadata attribute, the mapped parameters in the metadata attribute and the axes information (including calibration) can be accessed (and modified) in the AxesManager attribute.