Finding the full width half maximum of a peak

Question

I have been trying to figure out the full width half maximum (FWHM) of the the blue peak (see image). The green peak and the magenta peak combined make up the blue peak. I h

Answer 1

You can use spline to fit the [blue curve - peak/2], and then find it's roots:

import numpy as np
from scipy.interpolate import UnivariateSpline

def make_norm_dist(x, mean, sd):
    return 1.0/(sd*np.sqrt(2*np.pi))*np.exp(-(x - mean)**2/(2*sd**2))

x = np.linspace(10, 110, 1000)
green = make_norm_dist(x, 50, 10)
pink = make_norm_dist(x, 60, 10)

blue = green + pink   

# create a spline of x and blue-np.max(blue)/2 
spline = UnivariateSpline(x, blue-np.max(blue)/2, s=0)
r1, r2 = spline.roots() # find the roots

import pylab as pl
pl.plot(x, blue)
pl.axvspan(r1, r2, facecolor='g', alpha=0.5)
pl.show()

Here is the result: