A technology whereby removal of magnetic hysteresis is enabled in short time in parallel with a process for stage transfer, and so forth. There is executed a magnetic hysteresis removal sequence whereby current for exciting an electromagnetic coil prior to acquisition of an image is always set to a predetermined variation value against a target value, thereby obtaining information on an image, and so forth, when a diameter of a primary electron beam, converged on the specimen, becomes smaller than dimensions displayed by one pixel of an image to be acquired.