Princeton TriVista TVF

Status: Supported · Vendor: Princeton Instruments · Extensions: .tvf

TVF is the file format written for Princeton Instruments TriVista triple-stage Raman spectrometers. Despite the historical “binary spectroscopy file” wording, the observed files are XML documents with ASCII frame payloads. nirs4all-formats emits one record per frame, covering single spectra, time series, line scans, maps and Step-and-Glue acquisitions. The format is Raman, adjacent to the core NIRS point-spectrum scope.

Instruments & software

Produced by TriVista software for Princeton Instruments TriVista multi-spectrometer (triple-stage) Raman systems, including single/multi-frame acquisitions, time series, line scans, XY maps and Step-and-Glue stitching.

File structure

The reader sniffs .tvf by content (<XmlMain plus TriVista-File). The document is an XmlMain / Document container:

  • spectral values live in semicolon-separated Frame text nodes;

  • the spectral axis is a pipe-separated xDim/Calibration@ValueArray whose first field declares the point count (non-uniform axes supported);

  • xDim@Length is checked against the calibration array, and Frame@xDim against the resolved axis length;

  • the escaped InfoSerialized attribute carries Experiment, Detector, Calibration, X-Axis, Y-Axis and numbered Spectrometer groups.

What nirs4all-formats extracts

  • Signals — one SpectralRecord per frame; signal units are inferred only when DataLabel clearly denotes counts.

  • Axis — values from xDim/Calibration; the axis kind follows Calibration@Unit (not assumed wavelength-only). Axis metadata keeps the calibration label, normalised unit, display unit, calibration type and laser wavelength when present.

  • Metadata — InfoSerialized X/Y navigation mapped to spatial_x, spatial_y and frame indices (units preserved when present, otherwise reported as unknown); detector and one-or-many spectrometer groups promoted to metadata (serial/model/stage/focal length/groove density/order arrays for triple-stage setups); detector_temperature_c; and Windows FILETIME frame timestamps mapped to time_filetime_100ns and elapsed_time_seconds.

  • Step-and-Glue — emits the primary glued spectrum plus each child document as separate records, preserving the source windows.

Variants & support status

Variant

Status

Notes

Single / multi-frame, averaged or not

Supported

One record per frame.

Time series

Supported

Elapsed time derived from frame timestamps.

Line scan / XY map

Supported

X/Y navigation in metadata.

Multi-spectrometer (triple-stage)

Supported

Numbered spectrometer groups promoted.

Step-and-Glue

Supported

Glued primary plus child windows as separate records.

Limitations & known gaps

  • Objective metadata and unsupported hardware-specific InfoSerialized branches are left to a later conformance pass.

  • Spatial units absent from the current fixtures are reported as unknown rather than invented.

  • Variants outside the committed corpus have no explicit scope decision yet, and automated full-array conformance against rsciio.trivista is still pending.

Reference readers

Layout and fixture behaviour cross-checked against rsciio.trivista 0.13.0. RosettaSciIO defaults to the glued spectrum for Step-and-Glue; nirs4all-formats also emits child documents so low-level consumers can inspect the source windows.

Samples & validation

The RosettaSciIO .tvf corpus under samples/raman_trivista/ is fully golden-backed: single/multi-frame averages, two-accumulation variants, multi-spectrometer metadata, a 20-record Step-and-Glue file (glued primary plus 19 child windows), a timestamp-derived time series, a 21-point line scan and a 9-by-9 (81-record) XY map. The remaining items are conformance and metadata work, not sample blockers.