Patent ID: 7289660

Claim:
An inspection apparatus system for performing various inspections on a subject in at least a plurality of manufacturing processes of a production line, said inspection apparatus system comprising: an inspection apparatus including: (i) an image pickup section which acquires image data representing the subject, (ii) a determination section which automatically determines whether or not the subject is good, based on a result of a defect inspection performed on the image data, which is acquired by the image pickup section and subjected to image processing, and (iii) a compression section which performs nonreversible compression on the image data when the determination section determines that the subject is good, and which performs reversible compression on the image data when the determination section determines that the subject is not good; and an image server connected to the inspection apparatus and configured to store the image data only after the determination section determines whether or not the subject is good, and after the compression section then performs one of the nonreversible compression on the image data, when the determination section determines that the subject is good, and the reversible compression on the image data, when the determination section determines that the subject is not good.