Hitachi High-tech Corporation

Hitachi-high-technologies Corporation

Mitsutoshi Kobayashi

Maki Tanaka

Yoshinobu Hoshino

Atsushi Miyamoto

Kenji Nakahira

Provided is a method for adjusting a field-of-view of a charged particle microscope device, in which reference data for a sample is set, a plurality of regions of interest are set for the reference data, a rough sampling coordinate group is set for each of the plurality of regions of interest, the sample is irradiated with charged particles based on the sampling coordinate group to obtain a corresponding pixel value group, a plurality of reconstructed images corresponding to the plurality of regions of interest are generated based on the pixel value group, a correspondence relationship among the plurality of regions of interest is estimated based on the plurality of reconstructed images, and the plurality of regions of interest are adjusted based on the correspondence relationship. Here, the sampling coordinate group is set based on the reference data.

Charged particle microscope device and method for adjusting field-of-view thereof

Even if a generated wide-field image includes residual local misalignment, this charged particle microscope device can prompt for user input to correct such local misalignment, and can regenerate, on the basis of the user input, a wide-field image that includes little misalignment even in local areas of the overlap regions thereof. A charged particle microscope according to the present invention captures a plurality of images in such a way that each captured image has overlap regions that are to be overlapped with the overlap regions of captured images adjacent to that captured image, wherein an image processing unit: sets a pair of corresponding points in respective overlap regions of each two adjacent captured images; sets predetermined constraint conditions for each captured image; calculates the amounts of misalignment between the plurality of captured images on the basis of the set pairs of corresponding points and the set constraint conditions; connects the plurality of captured images to one another after correcting the misalignment between these captured images on the basis of the calculated amounts of misalignment, thereby generating a single wide-field image; calculates, for each of a plurality of local areas set in the overlap regions of each two adjacent captured images, a degree of reliability for the connection between these captured images; and notifies a user of either each found low reliability local area or the overlap region including that low reliability local area, as well as the set pairs of corresponding points and the set constraint conditions.

Charged particle microscope device and wide-field image generation method

In order to enable high-speed imaging of a wide-field image, the imaging method using the electron microscope comprises: irradiating and scanning a wide-field region of the sample with a low-dose amount of electron beam, and acquiring a wide-field image of the sample; setting, from this wide-field image, a narrow-field region; irradiating and scanning this narrow-field region with a high-dose amount of the electron beam, and acquiring a narrow-field image of the sample; determining the noise-removal parameters for the acquired wide-field image and narrow-field image; performing image quality improvement processing on the wide-field image and the narrow-field image; performing drift correction on the narrow-field image undergone the image quality improvement processing; and combining the narrow-field image undergone this drift correction and the wide-field image in such a manner that the visibility of each is at the same level throughout the entirety of the combined image.

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Tokyo, Japan

Mitsutoshi Kobayashi