Patent ID: 6963819

Claim:
A micropattern measuring method, comprising: acquiring an image of a micropattern including plural layers; extracting a rough outline of the micropattern in the image as a sequence of points including plural points; dividing the plural points composing the sequence of points into groups; making each of the groups as each of patterns belong to any of the plural layers; and acquiring edge coordinates of a pattern to be measured from the patterns which are made to belong to the respective layers; wherein the step of dividing the plural points into groups comprises: searching for points composing the rough outline in each of search directions with a representative point as a center and counting a distance from the representative point to each of detected points and the number of detected points in each of the search directions; ranking sequences of points, based on the distance from the representative point to each of the points in respective searches; dividing the respective sequences of points as subgroups based on the number of detected points and the ranking in the respective searches; and connecting the subgroups to constitute one group when a distance between end points of the respective subgroups is a predetermined threshold value or less.