The on-line use of histogram data for high-speed correction and alignment of electron microscope images
In the past few years on-line digital television frame store devices coupled to computers have been employed to attempt to measure the microscope parameters of defocus and astigmatism. The ultimate goal of such tasks is to fully adjust the operating parameters of the microscope and obtain an optimum image for viewing in terms of its information content. The initial approach to this problem, for high resolution TEM imaging, was to obtain the power spectrum from the Fourier transform of an image, find the contrast transfer function oscillation maxima, and subsequently correct the image. This technique requires a fast computer, a direct memory access device and even an array processor to accomplish these tasks on limited size arrays in a few seconds per image. It is not clear that the power spectrum could be used for more than defocus correction since the correction of astigmatism is a formidable problem of pattern recognition.