The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.

The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.

Date of Patent:
Dec. 04, 1990

Filed:

Oct. 18, 1988
Applicant:
Inventors:

Chinmoy B Bose, Green Brook, NJ (US);

Rajarshi Ray, Princeton, NJ (US);

Assignee:

AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ (US);

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06K / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
382-8 ; 382-1 ; 382 51 ; 382 49 ; 358106 ;
Abstract

Detection of a defect (18) on the surface (15) of an article (10), such as a semiconductor chip, is accomplished by illuminating the chip in a bright field and then capturing the image thereof with a television camera (30) coupled to a machine vision processor (32). To detect the defect 18, the vision processor first adaptively thresholds the captured image to effectively eliminate areas in the image brighter than those associated with the defect (18) which are usually dark. Thereafter, the vision processor (32) erodes and then dilates the dark areas within the image remaining after binarization to isolate those dark areas associated with the defect. The existence of a defect can then be established by the existence of a now-isolated dark area.


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