Additive manufacturing, such as laser sintering or melting of additive layers, can produce parts rapidly at small volume and in a factory setting. To ensure the additive manufactured parts are of high quality, a real-time non-destructive evaluation (NDE) technique is required to detect defects while they are being manufactured. The present invention describes an in-situ (real-time) inspection unit that can be added to an existing additive manufacturing (AM) tool, such as an FDM (fused deposition modeling) machine, or a direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) machine, providing real-time information about the part quality, and detecting flaws as they occur. The information provided by this unit is used to a) qualify the part as it is being made, and b) to provide feedback to the AM tool for correction, or to stop the process if the part will not meet the quality, thus saving time, energy and reduce material loss.

A method for displaying an image of a surface of a tire includes: taking an image of a surface of a tire formed with a mark having a protrusion and a recess; acquiring waveform data from the taken image of the surface; creating a histogram from the waveform data; determining, based on the histogram, a first bin threshold to distinguish a surface luminance of the protrusion of the mark, and a second bin threshold to distinguish a surface luminance of the recess of the mark; and displaying the image of the surface of the tire including the mark on a screen by representing a region equal to or higher than the first bin threshold, a region lower than the first bin threshold and higher than the second bin threshold, and a region equal to or lower than the second bin threshold in the histogram in three attributes of color.

A surface-defect detecting method of optically detecting a surface defect of a steel material, the method including: an irradiation step of irradiating an examination target part with illumination light beams from different directions by using two or more distinguishable light sources; and a detection step of detecting a surface defect in the examination target part based on the degree of overlapping of bright portions extracted from two or more images formed by reflected light beams of the illumination light beams.

The present invention is an imaging system which includes an optional hand-held mobile device and software application that allows a user to scan and communicates data to secured third parties. The embodiment allows such devices to transmit and receive critical imaging information. The SYCLOPS™ system will provide statistical data analysis and broadcast secured Information to users in a manner that have not been previously utilized.

A marking region image is obtained by cutting out the part corresponding to a marking region from an article image obtained by imaging an article to be inspected. Then, whether or not the marking is properly provided is determined by performing a character recognition of a marking part for a marking region image. Further, an image of an article having no marking and no defect is stored as a reference image, whereas a marking periphery image obtained by removing the image of the marking part from the marking region image is compared to the reference image. By that comparison, whether or not any defect is included in the marking peripheral part of the marking region except the marking part is determined.

Systems and methods for detecting defects on a reticle are provided. One system includes computer subsystem(s) configured for performing at least one repeater defect detection step in front-end processing during an inspection process performed on a wafer having features printed in a lithography process using a reticle. The at least one repeater defect detection step performed in the front-end processing includes identifying any defects detected at corresponding locations in two or more test images by double detection and any defects detected by stacked defect detection as first repeater defect candidates. One or more additional repeater defect detections may be performed on the first repeater defect candidates to generate final repeater defect candidates and identify defects on the reticle from the final repeater defect candidates.

A smart conversion and calibration of the defect coordinate, diagnosis, sampling system and the method thereof for manufacturing fab is provided. The intelligent defect diagnosis method includes receiving pluralities of defect data, design layout data, analyzing the defect data, design layouts, by a Critical Area Analysis (CAA) system. This method utilizes the precisely calibrated coordinate, the defect layout pattern, and the higher accurate calibrated defect size value. So, a more precise killer defect index can be generated with calibrated coordinate deviation calibration and defect size deviation calibration. When judging a defect relating to short circuit or open circuit failure probability, the defect failure result is more accurate and less incorrect judgment.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a program code including an image generation model, which when executed, causes a processor to input input data including sampling data of some of a plurality of semiconductor dies of a wafer to a generator network of the image generation model and output a wafer map indicating the plurality of semiconductor dies, and to input the wafer map output from the generator network to a discriminator network of the image generation model and discriminate the wafer map.

Methods of performing metrology. In one arrangement a substrate has a layer. The layer comprises a two-dimensional material. A target portion of the layer is illuminated with a beam of radiation and a distribution of radiation in a pupil plane is detected to obtain measurement data. The measurement data is processed to obtain metrology information about the target portion of the layer. The illuminating, detecting and processing are performed for plural different target portions of the layer to obtain metrology information for the plural target portions of the layer.

A vehicle surface analysis system includes a vehicle positioning unit, an optical image acquisition unit and an evaluation unit. The vehicle positioning unit includes a rotatable platform for supporting a vehicle. The image acquisition unit includes a plurality of individual image acquisition units, which operate with different wavelength work spectra and radiation energy levels to generate a number of recorded mages. The evaluation unit includes a difference value generation module, a difference value assessment module, an overall assessment module, and a generation module. The evaluation unit is constructed to provide a digital surface condition image of the vehicle.