This invention concerns a method of estimating background radiation in spectral data. The method may comprise, iteratively, fitting a polynomial to reference data, determining an allowable deviation of the reference data from the polynomial and clipping data points of the reference data or the spectral data that are more than the allowable deviation above the polynomial to provide the reference data for the next iteration until termination criterion is met. The reference data is initially based upon the spectral data. The method may comprise generating estimates of background radiation of the spectral data, each estimate based upon fitting a different order polynomial to the spectral data, and selecting an order of polynomial to use for estimating background radiation and/or one of the estimates of the background radiation based upon a fitting criterion applied to the fitting of the different order polynomials. The method may further comprise estimating the noise in the spectral data from the reference data.
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