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.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 24, 2001
Filed:
Dec. 23, 1998
Eiji Yonezawa, Aichi, JP;
Nidek Co., Ltd., Aichi, JP;
Abstract
A defect inspecting apparatus for inspecting a defect on an object to be inspected on the basis of comparison between a pattern at a first position and a pattern at a second position on the object to be inspected having repeated patterns. The apparatus includes: an imaging optical system having an image pick-up element for picking up an image of a substantially entire region or a divided region of the surface of the object to be inspected; a moving system for relatively moving the imaging optical system with respect to the object to be inspected; a movement controlling system for controlling the moving system such that a positional relationship of the pattern at the first position with respect to pixels of the image pick-up element is made substantially identical to a positional relationship of the pattern at the second position after movement thereof with respect to the pixels of the image pick-up element; and a defect detecting system for detecting a defect on the basis of comparison of data on two images picked up by the image pick-up element before and after the movement.