Patent ID: 7006886

Claim:
A method for analyzing defects on a substrate, the method including the steps of: optically inspecting the substrate to detect the defects, identifying the defects by location, analyzing the defects to detect extended objects, by enclosing groups of the defects within bounding boxes with different sizes to determine whether a given group of defects defines a given extended object, even though the size of the bounding box surrounding the given group of defects is different than the size of other bounding boxes surrounding other groups of defects that have also been defined as the given extended object, enclosing groups of the defects within bounding boxes with different orientations to determine whether a given group of defects defines a given extended object, even though the orientation of the bounding box surrounding the given group of defects is different than the orientation of other bounding boxes surrounding other groups of defects that have also been defined as the given extended object, and enclosing groups of the defects within bounding boxes with a different degree of overlap to determine whether a given group of defects defines a given extended object, even though the degree of overlap of the bounding box surrounding the given group of defects is different than the degree of overlap of other bounding boxes surrounding other groups of defects that have also been defined as the given extended object, and analyzing a set of the given extended objects for an identifiable pattern of repetition across the substrate.