Patent ID: 8264534

Claim:
A method for processing image data of the surface of a wafer recorded by at least one camera, comprising the steps of: defining an image field for each of at least one said camera in such a way that the recorded image content of said image field is repeated after N recorded images, wherein N is equal to or greater than two; determining M utility programs in an evaluation electronics, wherein M is equal to the number of recorded images after which the image content of the image fields is repeated, and adapting the number M of utility programs to the number of N images; feeding only images having a same image content of the image fields from the plurality of recorded images to each of the M utility programs to detect defects based on the image content of the image fields of the images from the surface of the wafer; and sequentially feeding the respective results of said M utility programs to a central program, the central program compiling a distribution of the defects present on the surface of the wafer from the individual results of said M utility programs; wherein a relative movement is carried out between the wafer and the at least one camera to record the image data of the surface of a wafer with the at least one camera.