Performance Evaluation of Scanning Electron Microscopes using Signal-to-Noise Ratio.

Naresh Marturi (1) , Sounkalo Dembélé (1) , Nadine Piat (1)

1 FEMTO-ST - Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174)

Scanning Electron Microscope is becoming a vital imaging tool in desktop laboratories because of its high imaging capability. Through this work we evaluate the performance of two different SEMs consisting of a tungsten gun and a field effect gun, with respect to time and magnification by estimating their image signalto- noise ratio. SNR is mainly applied to quantify the level of image noise over changes in the acquisition time and magnification rates. Majority of the existing methods to estimate this quantity are based on crosscorrelation technique and requires two images of the same specimen area. In this paper we propose a simple and efficient technique to compute signal-to-noise ratio using median filters. Unlike other techniques the proposed method uses only a single image and can be used in real time applications. The derived results show the effectiveness of the developed algorithm.

Mots clés: Scanning Electron Microscopes; Image Signal-to-Noise ratio.; Image Signal-to-Noise ratio

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Naresh Marturi, Sounkalo Dembélé, Nadine Piat. Performance Evaluation of Scanning Electron Microscopes using Signal-to-Noise Ratio.. The 8th International Workshop on MicroFactories, IWMF'12., Jun 2012, Tampere, Finland. pp.1-6. ⟨hal-00719444⟩