How can I take an asymmetric wave and measure peak distribution?

[apg504]

Using a profilometer the surface topology of a deposited material can be measured. I want to design a LabVIEW program to read in the raw data files of these profiles and then perform some analysis which will extract the distribution in peak/trough heights and in the distances between peaks. Reading in data, manipulating arrays and producing output files/plots I'm fine with but the problem I'm having is as to what analytical tools can be used on such asymmetric waveforms to get this info out. I was thinking some form of signal processing technique but I'm not sure. I've attached an example profile for one of my samples and the x-axis to give an idea of what I'm working with.

To reiterate, I want to measure the height of peaks and troughs in consecutive order, thus finding their distribution.

I also want to find the distance between adjacent peaks, and thus find this distribution.

The only way I know to do these operations is manually, which for 24 samples and three profiles per sample will take days of work. Help me to be more efficient!

[DonRoth · Accepted solution]

My strategy for this would be to use a peak detector function, either the native labview peak detector or a wavelet-based peak detector in the advanced signal processing toolkit.  Once you have the peaks and locations (the output of these functions), you can easily calculate distance between them, sort them, etc.

I actually have to do the same thing  on a gray scale line profile through a line on a radiographic image. Hoping to tackle that soon.