Coreset based mask inspection for semiconductor specimen fabrication

Abstract

There is provided a system and method of a method of mask inspection, comprising: obtaining a plurality of aerial images of a mask; generating a plurality of image coresets corresponding to the aerial images, comprising, for each given aerial image: applying a printing threshold on the given aerial image to obtain a binary image representative of printable features thereof; extracting a contour for each feature of interest (FOI) from the printable features, and generating a descriptor characterizing the contour, giving rise to a group of contours associated with respective descriptors; and creating an image coreset for the group of contours based on the respective descriptors thereof, the image coreset comprising one or more families, each comprising at least one representative contour representing one or more similar contours of a respective type from the group of contours. The plurality of image coresets can be merged to obtain a mask coreset.