Patent Document ID: 9342878
Application ID: 13991948
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A charged particle beam apparatus that inspects a defect in a pattern of a sample by the irradiation with an electron beam, the charged particle beam apparatus comprising: an electron optical system that detects secondary charged particles by irradiating the sample with the electron beam; an image processor that detects a defect by executing arithmetic processing on an image to be inspected that is obtained from the secondary charged particles; and a display unit that displays an image indicative of the defect, wherein the image processor includes a contour extractor that extracts the contour of the pattern by using a template image obtained on the basis of an image of the sample, an inspection target region setting unit that sets, on the basis of the contour of the pattern, a region to be inspected, a comparison arithmetic unit that compares the image to be inspected with an image of a part corresponding to the image to be inspected and detects a group of adjacent pixels of the image to be inspected having difference with respect to the image of the part corresponding to the image to be inspected as a defect candidate, and a defect determining unit that overlaps the defect candidate and the inspection target region, that determines an overlapping state between the defect candidate and the inspection target region, and that determines the defect candidate as a defect if the overlapping state is a predetermined overlapping state.