Peak finding and measurement

Function to locate and measure the positive peaks and valleys in noisy data sets.

Description

A fast customizable function for locating and measuring the peaks in noisy time-series signals. Adjustable parameters allow discrimination of "real" signal peaks from noise and background. Determines the position, height, and width of each peak by least-squares curve-fitting. It can find and measure 1000 peaks in a 1,000,000 point signal in 8 seconds. Includes two interactive versions, one with mouse-controlled sliders and one with keyboard control, for adjusting the peak finding criteria in real-time. Self-contained demos show how it works. See http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh/spectrum/PeakFindingandMeasurement.htm for details.

This version includes new command-line functions findpeaksplot.m, findpeaksnr.m, and peakstats.m. plus version 5.3 of iPeak.

Acknowledgements

This file inspired I Dpeak: Peak Identifier Function, Demo Functions For Peak Detection And Fitting., and I Peak: Interactive Peak Detector (Version 5.3).

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.8 (R2009a)

[Dan]

Tom, it works very well for me. Thank you!
The start and the end position of the peaks would also help me… the definition of 1% of the peak amplitude would be great.

[Tom O'Haver]

Dieter, I would be glad to add that if you could define quantitatively what you mean by peak start and end - for example, when the amplitude of the signal reaches 1% of the peak amplitude. Or would some other definition be more appropriate for your work?

[Dieter K.]

It is really good and easy to use. Only one thing I miss: The start and end position of the peaks would be really helpful.

[Tom O'Haver]

Andre, iPeak reports only the position, height, and width of peak parameterized as Gaussians, not the parabolic results of polyfit. But you can generate the Gaussian model from height.*exp(-((x-position)./(0.6005615.*width)) .^2) and plot it over the raw data. iPeak does this automatically for the peaks detected in the upper window.

[Andre]

This works really well for me, thanks!

One quick question: I would like to overlay the fitted parabola onto the raw data that I used findpeaks on, for visualization purposes (and to show that the fits are reasonable).

I tried going into the function and doing polyval on the coefs that are returned by polyfit, but this doesn't produce anything sensible.

I would like the drawn parabola to have the same units as the original data. Perhaps I could re-create the parabola from the output of findpeaks (ie the width, height, mean, etc), but it seems that polyval and other parabola drawers parameterize the parabolas in other ways.

Any ideas on which way to go??? Thanks!

Andre

[mitra devkota]

Dear MATLAB users, I have x and y as vectors, I plotted them and now I need to detect the peaks and also find the corresponding peak locations. How can I do it?
Thanks in advance,
Mitra

[zaidan]

great code for beginner

[mohammad]

thanks a lot Tom
this code is so useful

[Tom O'Haver]

When looking at a signal for the first time, it is best to use iPeak.m, iSignal.m, or ipf.m to inspect the data interactively. All of these can be downloaded from the Matlab File Exchange or from http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~toh/spectrum/SignalProcessingTools.html

Use the "pan and zoom" capabilities of these programs to inspect the whole signal closely. If the signal has important features that cover a very wide amplitude range or are superimposed on a much larger baseline or background, then those features may not be visible when the entire signal is plotted normally. Try using a semilog(x,y) plot, or use iSignal's semilog mode (H key).

[mohammad]

i have a .xls file, i saved data of that in a matrix like : r=xlsread(.xls)
now its needed to find peaks but this discrete data (r) is noisy data and using of 'findpeaks' command give me a lot of numbers of peaks (because of nois).
i think your code can help me. so, could you tell me how can i use this?
best regard

[Tom O'Haver]

I am not exactly sure what you mean by "matrix (discrete) wave" .Please explain.

[mohammad]

dear how can i use this for a matrix (discrete) wave?

[Tom O'Haver]

See http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23850 for a version that includes iterative curve fitting to selected peak shapes.

[Tom O'Haver]

See http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/23850-ipeak-interactive-peak-detector-version-1-2 for a version that uses keyboard control and that works in recent versions of Matlab.

[Andre Guy Tranquille]

 

[ZULIN]

 

[Michael Coen]

And comment out line 372 of rtslid.m as well... :)

[Michael Coen]

Ah, commenting out line 337 of rtslid.m:

"figure(params.fig);"

eliminates crashes for later versions of Matlab...

[Michael Coen]

Very nifty idea but it crashes quickly in Matlab 2008b, 2009a, and 2009b. There are clearly some GUI incompatibilities.

[Tom O'Haver]

Latest version just uploaded corrects a bug in the FindPeakSlidersG script that caused a malfunction when individual peaks are viewed if the x-axis data series does not start with zero.

[Christof Devriendt]

Just what I needed! Thank you very much!

[Ralph Ernstorfer]

fast and reliable tool ... thanks for sharing!

[Julius Kusuma]

Very useful interactive software! Thanks for sharing this.

[Hugo Banziger]

Please gat back to me with your private phone number.

Regards,
Dr. Hugo.

[Karan Jain]

This is a good algorithm but can it be changed to give peeks over a certain datum instead of the trough values.

[Li XinBo]

Your algorithm is excellent.But I find a problem in it.
Your algorithm is limited only when the data are positive number.If all the data are negative and there is peak points.Your algorithm can't detect the peak points.
But I can translate the coordinate axis.
It is to make all the y data into positive number. Then using your algorithm we can find the peak points.
I think you can modify your algorithm and make it adapt to the situation that the data is all negative number.
If you can modify your algorithm,please send the message to my email.([e-mail])
Thank your.
A student from BIT of China

[Matthew Butcher]

You saved my MEng project with this one. I credited you thogh, don't worry.
Many thanks Tom,
Matt.

[Tom Driscoll]

Perfect for scientific data processing. Good performance without being overly complicated. You just saved me a week of my time.

[Dmitry Kazachk]

Would be greate if it will do deconvolution and gave the areas for deconvolved peaks.
In general - great tool!

[BHARATH KUMAR]

 

[Tom O'Haver]

K. Tampa is correct; extreme.m is the one to use if you want to find ALL the minima and maxima. But "Peak finding and measurement" is intended to distinguish real peaks from noise in experimentally measured signals and to measure their height, position, and width. Two completely different purposes.

[mcs swamy]

 

[K. Tampa]

Get EXTREME.M in this site and you'll find the ALL peaks (minima and maxima!) of
rand(10^6,1) in less than a second, 10^7 in about 10 sec, and from matrix too, so...

[Tom O'Haver]

Version 1.2, dated August 24, 2006, is even faster than the previous version It can find and measure 1000 peaks in a 1,000,000 point signal in 13 seconds.

[Frank Anold]

It is pretty good and easy to use. Yet some commercial software,such as origin, can do faster.