Patent ID: 6876954

Claim:
A method for characterizing physical samples to determine the content of the samples comprising the steps of: obtaining a physical sample, or pair of physical samples, processing the sample or samples to generate a multidimensional response according to I ⁡ ( α , β , γ , … ) = ∑ i = 1 r ⁢ ⁢ c i ⁢ I i ⁡ ( α ) ⁢ I i ⁡ ( β ) ⁢ I i ⁡ ( γ ) ⁢ ⁢ … where the number of data points in each dimension are at least two α 1 , α 2 . . . α 1 l≦2 β 1 , β 2 . . . β m m≦2 γ 1 , γ 2 . . . γ n n≦2 and calculating the 1-dimensional responses of the components, Ĩ i (α), Ĩ i (β), Ĩ i (γ) . . . to provide an indication of the content of the sample or samples.