Soon after its invention,@footnote 1@ Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) developed into a prominent tool for surface analysis in the physical sciences. A rapid expansion of this type of microscopy beyond the physical sciences was achieved by the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM).@footnote 2@ Both types of Scanning Probe Microscopies (SPMs) yield topographic bitmaps of surface properties. Unfortunately, a rigid analysis of these bitmaps is often neglected in light of the ``beautiful'' images obtained. Here, we present a novel approach to enhance the interpretation of data containing repetitive features. It is based on the combination of linear correlation and bilinear bitmap rotation to average over multiple occurrences of the same feature in one SPM micrograph. Essentially, our procedure is similar to sample averaging in any kind of spectroscopy, or adding images acquired by electron microscopy. It can be used successfully to increase the signal to noise ratio of SPM data and to gain more confidence in data analysis of repetitive features.
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@footnote 1@ G. Binning, H. Rohrer, Ch. Gerber, and E. Weibel.; Surface studies by scanning tunneling microscopy.; Physical Review Letters, 49(1):57, 1982. @footnote 2@ G. Binning, C.F. Quate, and Ch. Gerber.; Atomic force microscope.; Physical Review Letters, 56(9):930, 1986.