interpretor image saving/mosaic map making

[neko]

This is about video scan image mosaics, not point based xray map mosaics (those work just fine).

So I was fiddling around with trying to see if there was a way I could make image mosaics with my own custom coordinates because our machine's 1000um fov has a real-world fov of about 950um. But it appears there's no way to make the interpretor save a real image, the only image I could save using the command line was a special "CAMIMG" format that appears can only be loaded back into the live probe monitor, nothing else can open it up (I checked with a hexeditor and CAMIMG is the first thing that appears in the file, and also shows up in the logs when you make a mistake).

If there is a way to fix the beam FOV offset issue I have so the cameca mosaic function is more useful? Can someone point me to the relevant manual page(s) or other instructions? I am having bad luck trying to find them in the use manuals.

If there's no way to resolve this, John, does PfE have a way to decouple the image FOV from the cell size to overcome this limitation?

100um of missing data between cells is just egregious, especially when folks need scans to try to locate objects smaller than 100um that might be on the margins (smaller FOV have less missing data but take far too long to complete). I worked out the math for doing this myself based on empirical feature measurement (it's rather easy) and I was going to make a python program that just spit out the proper interpretor code to capture all the images I needed but... thankfully I tested beforehand to determine the image saving problem and didn't waste a bunch of time writing useless code.

I also wanted a way to speed up mosaic making, since cameca apparently sets their timers to 1.5x the scan speed of the image time, or they just use the spf wait timer which keeps incorrect time. *shrug* either way there's a lot of wasted time

The good news is, manually taking pictures based on my calculated coordinates result in small mosaics with images features on the edges mostly lined up, now if only I could automate that....

[John Donovan]

If there is a way to fix the beam FOV offset issue I have so the cameca mosaic function is more useful? Can someone point me to the relevant manual page(s) or other instructions? I am having bad luck trying to find them in the use manuals.

If there's no way to resolve this, John, does PfE have a way to decouple the image FOV from the cell size to overcome this limitation?

Hi Neko,
I probably can't help you as I don't know much about the PeakSight software (I only use it to change samples and align the gun), but our Stage app (part of PFE) has a nice mosaic imaging feature for BSE, SE or CL video imaging:

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=324.msg5044#msg5044

It utilizes the same image calibration that PFE uses for exact alignment in X, Y and scan rotation (using three calibration points relative to a stage scan) as seen here:

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=396.msg2074#msg2074

Is the intent to simply to navigate the sample?  If so our PictureSnapApp might work as it can accept any image from any source, such as a document camera, SEM, or cell phone even:

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1020.0

It doesn't acquire images but does interface to any JEOL or FEI SEM/TEM instrument for stage control.  And it is quite inexpensive at US$499.  Actually it just occurs to me that we could modify PictureSnapApp to acquire images and even to acquire an X by Y set of images for subsequent mosaic operations...  hmmm, I need to think about that.

If you really need a mosaic of the BSE, SE or CL signal video images, other than the Stage app Mosaic feature in PFE, the only other thing I can think of is our Remote automation interface which gives one access to the low level instrument functions via a DCOM server app. 

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=754.0

Remote still requires PFE to operate, but it allows one to write their own macros and scripts to acquire images from their EPMA instrument using Excel, Matlab, LabView, basically any OLE container.  A number of our customers such as GE, NIST, NASA, etc.  utilize this Remote DCOM interface for their own custom application development.

[neko]

Hi John,

Navigation is always a plus, it's more for feature location, e.g. find all the zircons on a thin section for subsequent in-situ LA-ICPMS and stuff like making guesses as to the amount of certain minerals present across a large area up to a full thin section. We have a 7200DPI slide scanner we can make polarized/x-polar scans of sections with. I did see the thread with the document camera, which presumably has lens distortion minimized to preserve the rectilinearity of documents; I'm guessing that makes it superior to just hauling out my camera and macro lens - that sort of functionality would be nice but I'm more concerned about the lost data between frames. 10% of your thin section is a lot to miss, especially when zircon are almost all small enough to hide in the seams.

If PfE/Probe Image can accurately line up the edges of video scan images when it makes a mosaic, problem solved... you know, eventually