TSG’s History and Development Team
The Spectral Geologist software
suite (TSG™ for short) is developed, maintained and owned by CSIRO,
Australia’s premier science research agency, through its Division of
Exploration and Mining based in Sydney, Australia.
History
The TSG development project grew out
of a CSIRO research precursor called XSpectra, written in IDL in the mid
1990s in support of the PIMA and PIMA-II hand-held spectrometers
prototyped by CSIRO in the early 90’s and successfully commercialised by
Integrated Spectronics Pty Ltd. Subsequently CSIRO and Ausspec
International teamed on a one year project with a group of exploration
and mining companies to fund the development of a streamlined and
commercial version written in “C” and named “The Spectral Geologist”.
This powerful mix of world class research, extensive spectral analysis
experience and pragmatic industry needs forged what has now become the
industry standard tool for spectral analysis of geological materials
with its well known and highly intuitive visual interface. Since then
TSG has grown and grown adding new and advanced processing options,
productivity tools, assisted mineralogical interpretation, a batch
processing language, new wavelength regions and new display paradigms.
To these have now been added drill core and chip imaging options and the
ability to effortlessly handle datasets containing hundreds of thousands
of spatially-located spectra. Finally since 2004 TSG has differentiated
into a suite of five scalable programs offering a hierarchy of options
to different types of users, from the simple to the complex, but all
along guided by feedback from exploration industry users.
Development Team
(Photo from left to right - Peter
Mason, Jon Huntington and Mark Berman)
The brains (also the blood, sweat
and tears!) behind the TSG code is Peter Mason (with his love of
tropical fish and dry humour) supported on the geological functionality
and design side by Jon Huntington (CSIRO), Sasha Pontual and Nick Merry
(AusSpec International). The patented TSA™ algorithm in TSG is the work
of Mark Berman supported by Ryan Lagerstrom and Leanne Bischof of CSIRO Mathematical and
Information Sciences. Numerous CSIRO users have contributed to the beta
testing, feedback and market testing over the last ten years. All are
most sincerely thanked, including in particular, Kai Yang, Melissa
Quigley, Tim Munday, Cajetan Phang, Erick Ramanaidou, Martin Wells, Alan
Mauger (PIRSA) and many other un-named users scattered around the world.
Original TSG documentation is due to Peter Mason while the embedded
on-line manual is ably edited under contract by Sasha Pontual.
