High Quality Real-Time Video with Scanning Electron Microscope Using Total Variation Algorithm on a Graphics Processing Unit

Abstract

The scanning electron microscope (SEM) is usually dedicated to taking a picture of micro-nanoscopic objects. In the present study, we wondered whether a SEM can be converted as a real-time video display. To this end, we designed a new methodology. We use the slow mode of the SEM to acquire a high quality reference image that can then be used to estimate the optimal parameters that regularize the signal for a given method. Here, we employ Total Variation, a method which minimizes the noise and regularizes the image. An optimal lagrangian multiplier can be computed that regularizes the image efficiently. We showed that a limited number of iterations for Total Variation algorithm can lead to an acceptable quality of regularization. This algorithm is parallel and deployed on a Graphics Processing Unit to obtain a real-time high quality video with a SEM. It opens the possibility of a real-time interaction at micro-nanoscales.