  Microstructure characterisation has been greatly enhanced through the use of
electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), where rich maps are generated through
analysis of the crystal phase and orientation in the scanning electron
microscope (SEM). Conventional EBSD analysis involves raster scanning of the
electron beam and the serial analysis of each diffraction pattern in turn. For
grain shape, crystallographic texture, and microstructure analysis this can be
inefficient. In this work, we present Rapid EBSD, a data fusion approach
combining forescatter electron (FSE) imaging with static sparse sampling of
EBSD patterns. We segment the FSE image into regions of similar colour (i.e.
phase and crystal orientation) and then collect representative EBSD data for
each segmented region. This enables microstructural assessment to be performed
at the spatial resolution of the (fast) FSE imaging whilst including
orientation and phase information from EBSD analysis of representative points.
We demonstrate the Rapid EBSD technique on samples of a cobalt based superalloy
and a strained dual phase titanium alloy, comparing the results with
conventional analysis. Rapid EBSD is advantageous for assessing grain size
distributions in time-limited experiments.
