Reliable surface reconstruction from stereo pairs of images provided by scanning electron microscope

Abstract

A method is described providing quantitative surface description of samples on the basis of stereoscopic couples of microscopic images. The main problem which is the reliable identification of corresponding pixels in both differing images has been solved using a suitable criterium of similarity. An approximate solution to the other problem of identifying the geometry of the sample stand in the range of micrometers is shown too. The whole procedure is rather demanding as to computational complexity concerns but provides more detailed and substantially more reliable data than the professional software of the used scanning microscope. © 1994 Institute of Physics, Acad. Sci. CR.