SIGMA: Spectral Interpretation using Gaussian Mixtures and Autoencoder

Abstract Identification of unknown micro‐ and nano‐sized mineral phases is commonly achieved by analyzing chemical maps generated from hyperspectral imaging data sets, particularly scanning electron microscope—energy dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (SEM‐EDS). However, the accuracy and reliability of mineral identification are often limited by subjective human interpretation, non‐ideal sample preparation, and the presence of mixed chemical signals generated within the electron‐beam interaction volume. Machine learning has emerged as a powerful tool to overcome these problems. Here, we propose a machine‐learning approach to identify unknown phases and unmix their overlapped chemical signals. This approach leverages the guidance of Gaussian mixture modeling clustering fitted on an informative latent space of pixel‐wise elemental data points modeled using a neural network autoencoder, and unmixes the overlapped chemical signals of phases using non‐negative matrix factorization. We evaluate the reliability and the accuracy of the new approach using two SEM‐EDS data sets: a synthetic mixture sample and a real‐world particulate matter sample. In the former, the proposed approach successfully identifies all major phases and extracts background‐subtracted single‐phase chemical signals. The unmixed chemical spectra show an average similarity of 83.0% with the ground truth spectra. In the second case, the approach demonstrates the ability to identify potentially magnetic Fe‐bearing particles and their background‐subtracted chemical signals. We demonstrate a flexible and adaptable approach that brings a significant improvement to mineralogical and chemical analysis in a fully automated manner. The proposed analysis process has been built into a user‐friendly Python code with a graphical user interface for ease of use by general users.