A case-based reasoning approach to the identification of materials from diffraction patterns

X-ray diffractometry, within materials engineering, is a promising area of application for case-based reasoning. A large database of spectral diffraction patterns includes entries with different quality marks; moreover, several diffraction patterns happen to be equivalent, identifying the same material (crystalline phase), even though it also happens, that a spectral diffraction pattern alone would not identify a crystalline phase, and parameters such as density also have to be involved for identification. Current practice in the scanning and processing of so-called powder diffraction files, out of a database of files (formerly cards), calls for improvements of various kinds. Arguably, case-based reasoning is a technique from within AI that appears to exhibit a very interesting potential to make the process of identification less cumbersome.