From an understanding of the processes that cause a marginally unstable eigenmode of the system to sweep in frequency, it is shown how the absolute peak amplitude of the mode can be determined from the spectroscopic measurements of the frequency sweeping rate, e.g. with Mirnov coils outside the plasma. In a first attempt to implement such a diagnostic calculation, the MISHKA code (Mikhailovskii A B et al 1997 Plasma Phys. Rep.23 844) is used to determine the global mode structure of toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs) (Cheng C Z et al 1985 Ann. Phys. (NY)161 21) observed in the MAST spherical tokamak (Sykes A et al2001 Nucl. Fusion41 1423). Simulations using the HAGIS code (Pinches S D 1996 PhD Thesis The University of Nottingham, Pinches S D et al 1998 Comput. Phys. Commun.111 131) are then made, replicating the experimentally observed sweeping phenomena. The fundamental theory is then used together with these simulation results to predict the internal field amplitude from the observed frequency sweeping. The calculated mode amplitude is shown to agree with that obtained from Mirnov coil measurements.