Patent ID: 9406117
Filing Date: 2016-08-02
CPC Classification: G01N,G06T

Claim Text:
1. A method for inspecting an amount of positional aberration of a pattern on an object to be inspected with different types of patterns rendered thereon, comprising: imaging the object to be inspected and obtaining optical images; creating reference images from design pattern data; preparing an inspection recipe comprising one or more templates used for pattern matching and parameter settings necessary for the inspection; selecting a pattern of a reference image which corresponds to a template selected from the inspection recipe; detecting a first edge and a second edge in the selected reference image in accordance with the parameter settings using a standard coordinate; selecting an optical image which corresponds to the selected reference image; determining an expected coordinate region within which to search for an edge of the selected pattern based on a matching reference coordinate in the parameter settings that identifies a same reference location in relation to the selected pattern in both of the selected reference image and the selected optical image; detecting a first edge in the selected optical image corresponding to the first edge in the selected reference image and a second edge in the selected optical image corresponding to the second edge in the selected reference image using the matching reference coordinate to search for at least one of the first edge and the second edge in the selected optical image only within the determined expected coordinate region; and determining an inspection value by acquiring an amount of positional aberration between the selected optical image and the selected reference image by using the first edge and the second edge of the selected optical image, and the first edge and the second edge of the selected reference image.