Correcting nonlinear drift distortion of scanning probe and scanning transmission electron microscopies from image pairs with orthogonal scan directions

Unwanted motion of the probe with respect to the sample is a ubiquitous problem in scanning probe and scanning transmission electron microscopies, causing both linear and nonlinear artifacts in experimental images. We have designed a procedure to correct these artifacts by using orthogonal scan pairs to align each measurement line-by-line along the slow scan direction, by fitting contrast variation along the lines. We demonstrate the accuracy of our algorithm on both synthetic and experimental data and provide an implementation of our method. •We report on a method to correct nonlinear distortion in scanning probe microscopy.•We use two or more orthogonally scanned images.•We test this method on synthetic and experimental data.•We can remove distortions without degrading complex experimental signals.