A laser mark which will be the positioning mark for a secondary charged
particle image in the charged particle beam apparatus is applied by
moving the sample processing/observation area in the charged particle
beam apparatus so as to come into the view field while performing an
observation by an infrared microscope, and by a using a laser optical
system disposed coaxially with an optical observation system, the mark
made at the periphery of the processing/observation object area. Next, by
a superposition of an infrared transmission image and a CAD data, the
processing/observation object area and the laser mark are registered onto
the CAD data. And, by a correlation of the registered data read from the
charged particle beam apparatus and the secondary charged particle image,
it is possible to accurately and easily determine the processing
position.