EMPAD format (XML & RAW)

This is the file format used by the Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD). It is used to store a series of diffraction patterns from scanning transmission electron diffraction measurements, with a limited set of metadata. Similarly, to the ripple format, the raw data and metadata are saved in two different files and for the EMPAD reader, these are saved in the .raw and .xml files, respectively. To read EMPAD data, use the .xml file, which will automatically read the raw data from the .raw file too. The filename of the .raw file is defined in the .xml file, which implies changing the file name of the .raw file will break reading the file.

Note

When using HyperSpy, you need to specify the correct reader plugin, as different .xml formats are supported:

>>> import hyperspy.api as hs
>>> sig = hs.load("file.xml", reader="EMPAD")

API functions

rsciio.empad.file_reader(filename, lazy=False)

Read file format used by the Electron Microscope Pixel Array Detector (EMPAD).

Parameters:

filenamestr, pathlib.Path

Filename of the file to read or corresponding pathlib.Path.

lazybool, default=False

Whether to open the file lazily or not. The file will stay open until closed in compute() or closed manually. get_file_handle() can be used to access the file handler and close it manually.

Returns:

list of dict

List of dictionaries containing the following fields:

• ‘data’ – multidimensional numpy.ndarray or dask.array.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

When the file contains several datasets, each dataset will be loaded as separate dictionary.