DETECTION OF THIN LINES FOR SELECTIVE SENSITIVITY DURING RETICLE INSPECTION USING PROCESSED IMAGES

摘要

Disclosed is a detection method for spot image based thin line detection. The method includes generating a band limited spot image from the transmitted and reflected optical image of the mask. The spot image is corrected to minimize multiple optical aberrations from the spot image. The spot image is restored back to the mask image to enable at least one of more reliable segmentation or more accurate linewidth measurements to facilitate segmentation between the thin and non-thin areas on the mask image. The thin line features on the reconstructed mask image are distinguished from the non-thin lines features. Regions containing thin line features are grown while thin line growth does not invade non-fine line features.