Method for operating a particle beam device, and particle beam device

A method of operating a particle beam device comprising a particle beam microscope, the method comprising:

• providing a sample, which comprises a structure on a surface, in a work region of the particle beam microscope;
• recording a first structure image, which is an image of the sample that comprises an image representation of at least part of the structure, using the particle beam microscope;
• providing structure shape information that represents at least part of a shape of the structure;
• performing a sequence, which comprises:
• determining an image position, which represents a position of the image representation of the structure in a most recently recorded structure image, using a first image feature recognition process, which uses the structure shape information to recognize the image representation of the structure in the most recently recorded structure image;
• modifying an operating setting of the particle beam microscope based on the most recently determined image position so that the image position of the image representation of the structure approaches a target image position in a further structure image recorded using the modified operating setting, wherein modifying the operating setting of the particle beam microscope comprises modifying an operating setting of a particle beam deflection of the particle beam microscope and/or modifying an operating setting of a sample stage carrying the sample;
• modifying the structure shape information based on the most recently recorded structure image and/or based on the most recently determined image position;
• and
• recording a further structure image using the particle beam microscope using the most recently modified operating setting;
• and
• repeating the sequence using the recorded further structure image as the most recently recorded structure image.