In a preferred embodiment, a method of identifying nuclides, including the
steps of: determining spectral continuum via a peak erosion process to
render a residual peak spectrum; filtering a standard nuclide library
specified by a user to select candidate nuclides; simultaneously fitting
calibrations and activities of selected candidate nuclides from the
standard library to the peak spectrum using a standard least squares
method; calculating statistical significances of optimized nuclide
activities and determining shape correlations between optimized candidate
nuclide peak spectra and measured peak spectrum with alternative
candidates subtracted; and identifying and providing activities of
nuclides determined to have sufficiently significant activities and
sufficient shape correlations.