Registration for Raman Base is free of charge and only requires an email address. You will be prompted to select a password. The registration is important for safety reasons. You can register here or by clicking "Register" on the navigation bar. Once registered, you can log in to your user account, allowing you to create a personal spectral repository, download public spectral data from other users, search spectra by similarity, and access many more useful functions. However, even without registration, there is plenty to explore (see below).
Unregistered users can access the following services:
On the initial (landing) page, click the "Explore Spectra" button or click "Spectra" on the top bar. If you reach the end of the page, continue by clicking the "Load More" button.
View the details of the spectra from the list by clicking the "Detail" button or the spectrum image in the list. A page will open containing a larger version of the Raman spectrum and all the associated data, such as the excitation wavelength, laser power, keywords, and many other useful notes. Explore each spectrum with a data cursor, showing X and Y coordinates by hovering over it. By clicking and dragging, it is possible to zoom into any part of the spectrum. A double click over the spectrum will unzoom to the original view. Tick-boxes under the spectrum can be unticked and re-ticked to select a specific spectrum when multi-spectra are viewed.
Spectra with certain characteristics, e.g., spectra of different chemical substances, can be searched for by a full-text search engine. The searched term can be entered into the field next to the "Search" button, placed on the navigation bar.
Registered users can access the following additional services:
By clicking the "Upload" button on the navigation bar, users can upload their own spectra to the database and annotate them with various parameters. The spectra can be uploaded by "Drag and drop" to the upload form. All the additional parameters are shown in the dedicated fields in the same form. All the additional parameters of the spectra can be edited any time by their author.
In Raman Base, you can search for spectra with similarities to a selected spectrum supplied by you using the "Tools – Compare Spectra" on the navigation bar. You can enter a text file with your spectrum or copy & paste two columns of numbers. (See "Format of Input Spectra.")
Raman Base allows you to search for spectra similar to a selected spectrum in the database by pressing the "Compare" button in the detailed view of the spectrum.
Selecting a search area:select an area on the reference spectrum that will be taken into account by the search algorithm. Place the cursor on a spectrum, press the left mouse button, drag the cursor over the spectrum, and release when you covered the area of your interest.
There are currently two algorithms for finding similarities between spectra:
Adding the DOI of the associated article to the descriptions of your personal spectra ensures that other users can find your spectral data and seek your permission for republishing. You can add the DOI of your article to the respective spectra during the upload or later, after clicking the "Edit" button on the entry. When publishing Raman-based research, you can use Raman Base to share the associated Raman dataset, searchable by the DOI of the article, see Raman Base DOI search
This is a system trained to discriminate between spectra from various samples (e.g., algal cells and a few others) and is able to determine which spectrum fits into which category, defined by a keyword. So far, this is essentially a test; however, this feature will be gradually refined towards automatic analyses of various spectra and individual peaks.
When you enter the detailed view of a spectrum and click on the menu next to the download button, you can copy one or more spectra to a clipboard. Then you can use "Exports" under your personal menu to export these spectra at once.
In the section "Stats" on the navigation bar, you can view several different statistics of the database, such as the total number of uploaded spectra, daily uploaded spectra, and the keywords associated with different spectra, together with their proportion in the database.
You can download the text file with the spectral data by clicking the "Download" button in the detailed view of a spectrum. The downloaded file is in a text file with two or more columns with values separated by a tabulator. The first column represents the x-axis.
Your spectral repository "My Spectra" automatically keeps track of the spectra you uploaded to Raman Base. You can enter your personalized spectral repository by clicking the person pictogram on the right side of the navigation bar and selecting "My Spectra."
Here, you can manage your spectra in the following ways:
Raman Base \u2013 Functionalities, Rev. 1.0 released on 2023-12-01 by the Raman Base team.