Enhancing 3D reconstruction accuracy of FIB tomography data using multi-voltage images and multimodal machine learning

FIB-SEM tomography is a powerful technique that integrates a focused ion beam (FIB) and a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to capture high-resolution imaging data of nanostructures. This approach involves collecting in-plane SEM images and using FIB to remove material layers for imaging subsequent planes, thereby producing image stacks. However, these image stacks in FIB-SEM tomography are subject to the shine-through effect, which makes structures visible from the posterior regions of the current plane. This artifact introduces an ambiguity between image intensity and structures in the current plane, making conventional segmentation methods such as thresholding or the k-means algorithm insufficient. In this study, we propose a multimodal machine learning approach that combines intensity information obtained at different electron beam accelerating voltages to improve the three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of nanostructures. By treating the increased shine-through effect at higher accelerating voltages as a form of additional information, the proposed method significantly improves segmentation accuracy and leads to more precise 3D reconstructions for real FIB tomography data.

Subjects

3D reconstruction

FIB tomography

FIB-SEM

Multi-voltage images

Multimodal machine learning

Overdeterministic systems

MLE@TUHH

DDC Class

670: Manufacturing

Funding(s)

SFB 986: Teilprojekt C01 - Multiskalige photonische Materialien mit anpassbarer Absorption und thermischer Emission

Publication version

publishedVersion

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Name

s41871-024-00223-y-1.pdf

Type

Main Article

Size

3.28 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Enhancing 3D reconstruction accuracy of FIB tomography data using multi-voltage images and multimodal machine learning