Patent ID: 8436899

Claim:
A tilted illumination observation method for observing an observation specimen, comprising: directing a focused charged particle beam to scan a standard specimen; detecting reflected particles or secondary particles emitted from the standard specimen; obtaining a perpendicular irradiation image of the standard specimen; obtaining a first tilted irradiation image of the standard specimen; directing a focused charged particle beam to scan an observation specimen; detecting reflected particles or secondary particles emitted from the observation specimen; obtaining a second tilted irradiation image of the observation specimen under the same condition used to obtain the first tilted irradiation image; obtaining an image that compensates for blurring of the second tilted irradiation image by utilizing the perpendicular irradiation image and the first tilted irradiation image; wherein obtaining an image that compensates for blurring comprises: dividing a first Fourier transform of the first tilted irradiation image by a second Fourier transform of the perpendicular irradiation image to obtain a first result; dividing a third Fourier transform of the second tilted irradiation image by the first result to obtain a second result; and subjecting the second result to an inverse Fourier transform.