Patent ID: 9305346
Filing Date: 2016-04-05
CPC Classification: G06T

Claim Text:
1. A method of inspecting fabricated articles, comprising: receiving a fabricated article to be inspected for defects, the fabricated article having a pattern thereon, and the pattern being based on a pattern design; creating a rule set for defining critical regions of the pattern as represented in the pattern design, the critical regions being defined by the rule set as regions in which a respective pattern element spacing of the pattern design indicates defects are more likely to be found during inspection; applying the rule set to the pattern design to identify a critical region of the pattern on the fabricated article and a non-critical region of the pattern on the fabricated article; inspecting the non-critical region of the pattern on the fabricated article for defects at first resolution; inspecting the critical region of the pattern on the fabricated article for defects at a second resolution higher than the first resolution; wherein the rule set defines at least one of the critical regions based on the respective pattern element spacing violating a minimum threshold distance between two pattern elements in the pattern design; and wherein applying the rule set to the pattern design includes: comparing the minimum threshold distance to a distance between two pattern elements in the pattern design; and identifying, as the critical region, the region between the two pattern elements if the two pattern elements are spaced apart a distance less than the minimum threshold distance.