Reply to 'Feasibility of neural network approach in spectral mixture analysis of reflectance spectra'

Neural Networks (NN) have proliferated during recent years, and are widely used in the scientific environment, particularly providing interpretation of results acquired by spectroscopic techniques. Separately and independently, these results were historically analysed and interpreted with 'classical techniques', derived from statistical formulations. The purpose of this reply is to analyse under what conditions NN methods have a better performance than the statistical methods, when it is necessary to process a spectrum obtained by a linear spectroscopic technique. The use of Neural Networks methods instead of purely statistical methods for linear spectra analysis and interpretation is discussed.