Imaging error compensation method for through-focus scanning optical microscopy images based on deep learning

Through-focus scanning optical microscopy (TSOM) is a model-based nanoscale metrology technique which combines conventional bright-field microscopy and the relevant numerical simulations. A TSOM image is generated after through-focus scanning and data processing. However, the mechanical vibration and optical noise introduced into the TSOM image during image generation can affect the measurement accuracy. To reduce this effect, this paper proposes a imaging error compensation method for the TSOM image based on deep learning with U-Net. Here, the simulated TSOM image is regarded as the ground truth, and the U-Net is trained using the experimental TSOM images by means of a supervised learning strategy. The experimental TSOM image is first encoded and then decoded with the U-shaped structure of the U-Net. The difference between the experimental and simulated TSOM images is minimised by iteratively updating the weights and bias factors of the network, to obtain the compensated TSOM image. The proposed method is applied for optimising the TSOM images for nanoscale linewidth estimation. The results demonstrate that the proposed method performs as expected and provides a significant enhancement in accuracy.