| 摘要 |
<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a pattern inspection apparatus for appropriately detecting defects. <P>SOLUTION: The inspection apparatus has an image pickup part 2 for picking up an image of a substrate, an inspection and output part 4 for inputting an image signal from the image pickup part 2 and a computer 5. An image memory 41 of the inspection and output part 4 stores the inspected image obtained by the image pickup part 2. In the computer 5, a LUT utilized for a pixel value conversion is created based on a pixel value conversion curve. The pixel value conversion curve is a continuous curve having a local maximum and a local minimum at representative values of the pixel values in two regions in the image. A spread angle at the representative value in a region where the pixel values have large differences is larger than the spread angle at the representative value in the other region. The pixel values of a reference image corresponding to the pixel values of the inspected image are inputted to pixel value conversion parts 44a, 44b and converted. The pixel values of the inspected image and the reference image after conversion by a comparison and inspection part 45, are compared and the defects are determined. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO |
