Patent ID: 8110800

Claim:
A scanning electron microscope system comprising: means for acquiring an image of a desired area of a sample provided with a pattern formed on a surface using a scanning electron microscope; means for storing a library correlating a cross-sectional shape of the pattern of the sample and electron beam signal waveform information corresponding to the cross-sectional shape of the pattern; means for extracting dimension information of the pattern by processing information obtained from the image of the pattern of the sample obtained by the capturing means, and looking up the library information stored in the storage means, wherein the information obtained from the image of the sample in the extracting means is a local projection waveform generated by projecting the image in a tangential direction with respect to the pattern edge at each point or each representative point of the pattern edge in the image of the sample; and means for displaying information on a screen, the information being related to the dimension of the pattern extracted by the extracting means.