After several years of operative-investigative activities the Spectrapol forces have detained members of an international criminal group, The First Order. According to the investigation, the detainees have developed and distributed a new form of doping - mental steroids, which make people feel what they called a “disturbance in the Force.” The use of the doping spurred a sequence of criminal activities including illegal lightsaber battles.
Among other evidence, the Spectrapol members found several plastic bags with residuals of possible doping tablets in form of white solid cylinders. They took Raman spectral images of the surface of one of the tablets using Raman imaging microscope equipped with 5 mW 532 nm laser. The image was acquired for the area of 520 x 520 µm with a step size of 1 µm. The data is available for download as MATLAB MAT-file (v. 7.3) with two variables: a matrix with 270 400 spectra (which can be refolded to 520 x 520 image) and a vector with the corresponding Raman shift values:
DOWNLOAD DATA FROM HERE (2.5 GB)
Your goal is to investigate the image and reveal as much information about the tablet as possible. What are the active ingredient and other components? How well are the components are distributed? Does the tablet resemble any form of medicine currently presented on the market? Any information will be of a high value. Please prepare a thorough report describing the results as well as the used method and the analysis workflow.
A detailed report with solution for the challenge should be sent as a PDF file to IASIM-18 Organising Committee (Questo indirizzo email รจ protetto dagli spambots. E' necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.) no later than 16th of May. Please, make sure that the file size does not exceed 15 Mb. A judge panel will assess the reports and select three best solutions. Authors of the selected reports will have a possibility to present their work during a special conference session devoted to the challenge. We will announce the winner at the end of this session.