An improved charged particle beam inspection apparatus, and more particularly, a particle beam inspection apparatus for detecting a thin device structure defect is disclosed. An improved charged particle beam inspection apparatus may include a charged particle beam source to direct charged particles to a location of a wafer under inspection over a time sequence. The improved charged particle beam apparatus may further include a controller configured to sample multiple images of the area of the wafer at difference times over the time sequence. The multiple images may be compared to detect a voltage contrast difference or changes to identify a thin device structure defect.

A radiographic system comprises: an irradiation control apparatus including a first timer configured to provide a time value for an irradiation timing; and a radiographic apparatus that is communicably connected to the irradiation control apparatus and includes a second timer configured to provide a time value for an imaging timing. The system measures a time difference between a time value of the first timer and a time value of the second timer; corrects at least one timer out of the first timer and the second timer so as to eliminate the time difference using one of a plurality of types of correction processing having different correction periods. The correction processing to be used is selected from the plurality of types of correction processing, based on an operating state of the radiographic apparatus.

A method of characterizing a part including obtaining an X-ray tomography image of the part and then a step of correlating the image with a reference wherein the correlation step includes searching among a predefined set of X-ray tomography image transformations for a transformation that minimizes the difference between the image and the reference in order to characterize the inside of the part.