Hitachi-high-technologies Corporation

Masahiro Kitazawa

Yuichi Abe

Mitsuji Ikeda

Wataru Nagatomo

Jun'ichi Taguchi

Junichi Taguchi

It is an object of the present invention to provide a semiconductor inspection apparatus capable of well carrying out position alignment and correctly determining whether the position alignment has been carried out successfully or has ended in a failure without operator interventions even if an inspected image is an image having few characteristics as is the case with a repetitive pattern or the inspected image is an image having a complicated shape. The semiconductor inspection apparatus includes means for imaging a shape on a wafer or on an exposure mask; means for storing an image inspected by the imaging means; means for storing design data of the semiconductor circuit corresponding to a position on the wafer or on the exposure mask which are to be imaged by the imaging means; means for storing a design-data image obtained as a result of converting the design data into an image; means for generating a design-data ROI image by converting an interest drawing region found from a relative crude-density relation of a shape included in the design-data image into an image; and a position alignment section configured to carry out position alignment on the inspected image and the design-data image. The semiconductor inspection apparatus makes use of the design-data ROI image in order to identify a position at which the inspected image and the design-data image match each other or compute the degree of coincidence.

Pattern matching apparatus and computer program

An evaluation value indicative of the extent of lines in each direction is calculated for a pre-processed image in which 0s are filled in and extended in the lateral direction of the inputted image and which has been reduced &#x215b;th in the longitudinal direction. To obtain the angle of rotation of an image from the change in the evaluation value obtained while the angle relative to the lateral direction of the pre-processed image is modified in small steps, a parallel line is drawn for each direction, a projection is taken, and the sum of squares serves as the evaluation value of the direction. The direction having the highest evaluation value serves as the obtained direction of rotation from the normal position. The projection of each direction references the point of intersection between the parallel line drawn for each direction and the coordinate line of the horizontal axis.

Device and method for detecting angle of rotation from normal position of image

The present invention is a template matching processing device capable of evaluating a similarity degree which supports even a case of intensive morphological change between a design image and a photographic image. In the template matching processing device, matching processing between the design image and the photographic image is performed, a partial design image is obtained by clipping a portion having the highest correlation (step), and processing for deforming the photographic image in accordance with the clipped design image (stepsto) is performed, so that correlation between the deformed image obtained and the design image is taken to be set as the similarity degree.

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Honjo, Japan

Masahiro Kitazawa