A new method for the peak analysis of gamma-ray spectra

A new method for calculating the peak areas in high-resolution gamma-ray spectra is presented. This approach minimizes the weighted sum of squares for the differences between consecutive channel counts of the continuous background within the studied spectral region, assuming a linear background dependence on the energy. The results obtained using the new method agree, within the statistical uncertainties of the measured channel content, with those derived from both the "linear weighted Least squares" method and the "Region of interest" method, provided the peaks are on a continuous background, which can be well approximated with a linear dependence on energy. Since the correlation coefficients between the total counts, peak counts, and background counts derived with the new method differ from those obtained using existing methods, the proposed method offers an independent approach to gamma-ray spectral peak analysis.