both sides of the noise spike therefore the samples that are used to find a sum for the pulse would include sample data that is taken between times 52 and 54 as such the sample data that is used to find a sum for the pulse includes sample data that is actually representative of baseline data not the event as such this method may produce inaccurate sums when noise is present in the sample data the preferred embodiments include several computer implemented methods to reduce the susceptibility of a peak search to signal noise by scanning for the largest sum rather than the largest sample value for example one embodiment may include selecting a value n and computing a running sum for n values n may be chosen such that it is slightly larger than the number of samples expected in the widest pulse for example if the widest pulse is expected to include 13 samples n may be 15 17 etc as each sample is obtained a sum of n samples i e the current sample and the previous n u2212 1 samples may be determined in this manner a running sum of n samples may be updated as the samples are taken when a sufficient number of samples have been processed the array of sums is scanned for a peak or the largest sum value a sufficient.