| US 7,463,791 B2 | ||
| Method for automatic alignment of tilt series in an electron microscope | ||
| Thomas Koehler, Norderstedt (Germany); Thomas Netsch, Hamburg (Germany); and Kerstin Stockmeier, Tübingen (Germany) | ||
| Assigned to FEI Company, Hillsboro, Oreg. (US) | ||
| Filed on Dec. 10, 2003, as Appl. No. 10/733,741. | ||
| Claims priority of application No. 02080689 (EP), filed on Dec. 11, 2002. | ||
| Prior Publication US 2004/0119016 A1, Jun. 24, 2004 | ||
| Int. Cl. G06K 9/32 (2006.01); G06K 9/62 (2006.01); G06K 9/00 (2006.01) | ||
| U.S. Cl. 382—294 [382/209; 382/151] | 9 Claims |
| 1. A method for automatic alignment of tilt series in an electron microscope, comprising:
applying markers to a sample to be imaged by the electron microscope;
providing a tilt series of images of the sample;
identifying a first set of candidate markers in each of the images in the tilt series;
attributing at least one probability parameter to each candidate marker in each image;
characterized in that the method further comprises:
selecting a second set as a subset of candidate markers from the first set of candidate markers on the basis of said at least
one probability parameter;
projecting the candidate markers in the second set onto a sole image;
applying a fitting algorithm to determine a set of parallel straight lines or very elongate ellipses best fitting the candidate
markers in the sole image to identify a third subset of candidate markers;
aligning the images in the tilt series on the basis of the third subset of identified candidate markers.
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