| 摘要 |
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an apparatus and a method capable of detecting a defect at each part of a reticle with severity corresponding to the change degree of a brightness value due to the pixel position of each part of the reticle and capable of detecting only a defect becoming a problem at a time of the exposure of a wafer at a high speed with a simple constitution. SOLUTION: The defect detection apparatus has a difference image forming part 9 for forming difference image data wherein the absolute value of the difference between the multivalue digital image data of the inspection region of a reticle 1 and the multivalue digital image data compared with the digital image data in order to detect a defect is set as the brightness value of each pixel, a region classifying part 11 for classifying the inspection region into a plurality of regions corresponding to the change degree of the brightness value due to a pixel position with respect to at least one of the multivalue digital image data of the inspection region and the comparing multivalue digital image data and a defect judging part 13 calculating the integrated value of the brightness value in the region of a predetermined size around each pixel of the difference image data to judge a defect based on an inspection parameter preset at every region wherein each pixel is classified. |
