Find N Candidates

Find N candidates needs to contain the number of top candidates to plot and display to the user. It must be an integer greater than or equal to one. During a search, a theoretical spectrum is iteratively shifted across the search window in increments of tolerance. At each shift, the theoretical spectrum is matched against peaks in the experimental spectrum. Each shifted theoretical spectrum produces a “matched spectrum” - a subset of peaks from the experimental spectrum. There can be as many matched spectra as there are shift considered. Matched spectra are ranked using a weighted score that considers shape similarity and other factors. Only the top match or the top few matches are relevant, the rest almost certainly do not contain any useful information and are discarded. “Find N candidates” controls how many top candidates are shown to the user.