The measurement of line-edge roughness (LER) has recently become a major topic of concern in the litho-metrology community and the semiconductor industry as a whole, as addressed in the 2001 ITRS roadmap. The Advanced Metrology Advisory Group (AMAG, a council composed of the chief CD-metrologists from the International SEMATECH consortium's Member Companies and from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST) has begun a project to investigate this issue and to direct the CD-SEM supplier community towards a semiconductor industry-backed solution for implementation. The AMAG group has designed and built a 193 nm reticle that includes structures implementing a number of schemes to intentionally cause line edge roughness of various spatial frequencies and amplitudes. The lithography of these structures is in itself of interest to the litho-metrology community and will be discussed here. Measurements on different CD-SEMs of major suppliers will be used to comparatively demonstrate the current state of LER measurement. These measurements are compared to roughness determined off-line by analysis of top-down images from these tools. While no official standard measurement algorithm or definition of LER measurement exists, definitions used in this work are presented and compared in use. Repeatability of the measurements and factors affecting their accuracy will be explored, as well as how CD-SEM parameters can effect the measurements.