DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Acknowledgement is made of Applicant’s claim of priority from the Japanese Application number JP2022-081548 filed on 05/18/2022 and PCT application number PCT/JP2023/016445 filed on 04/26/2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (“IDS”) filed on 11/13/2024, 02/09/2026 and 02/18/2026 have been reviewed and the listed references have been considered.
Drawings
The 04-page drawings have been considered and placed on record in the file.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 4 and 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinoda et al. (US 2020/0134355 A1) in view of Delbracio et al. (US 2024/0013350 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Shinoda teaches, An image noise reduction method of reducing noise (Shinoda, ¶0060: “using a smoothing filter or the like to remove noise components”) from an image generated by a scanning electron microscope, (Shinoda, ¶0048: “a function of controlling each configuration of the scanning electron microscope and forming an image based on detected electrons”) comprising: generating a reference image of a sample by the scanning electron microscope; (Shinoda, ¶0041: “a defect inspection device 2402, which irradiates a sample with an electron beam to acquire an image”) generating an artificial-noise image by adding artificial noise to the reference image; (Shinoda, ¶0067: “create an image to which the contrast, the luminance value, and the noise have been added”) (Shinoda, ¶0048: “a function of controlling each configuration of the scanning electron microscope and forming an image based on detected electrons”) the workpiece being an object of inspection and shape measurement (Shinoda, ¶0048: “a function of measuring a pattern width of a pattern formed on a sample”) of a semiconductor device; (Shinoda, ¶0007: “performing actual semiconductor inspection”). However, Shinoda does not explicitly teach, generating an artificial low-quality image by applying an anisotropic filter to the artificial-noise image, the anisotropic filter being configured to stretch the artificial noise in a scanning direction of an electron beam of the scanning electron microscope; creating a denoising model by performing machine learning using training data including the reference image and the artificial low-quality image; and inputting the image of the workpiece into the denoising model; and outputting a denoise image from the denoising model.
In an analogous field of endeavor, Delbracio teaches, generating an artificial low-quality image by applying an anisotropic filter to the artificial-noise image, (Delbracio, ¶0037: “the blur kernel may be modeled with an anisotropic Gaussian function”) the anisotropic filter being configured to stretch the artificial noise in a scanning direction of an electron beam of the scanning electron microscope; (Delbracio, ¶0039: “the blur level at the direction of the principal (orthogonal) axis”) creating a denoising model (Delbracio, ¶0033: “the pre-filter module 204 may use a denoising neural network”) by performing machine learning using training data including the reference image and the artificial low-quality image; (Delbracio, ¶0033: “the denoising neural network can be trained by inputting multiple noisy versions of images together with clean versions of the same images”) and inputting the image of the workpiece into the denoising model; and outputting a denoise image from the denoising model. (Delbracio, ¶0033: “output clean images (the noise-reduced images) from noisy images that are input into the neural network. The resulting noise-reduced images can have no noise or may still have some noise, but the noise may be greatly reduced by the denoising neural network”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shinoda using the teachings of Delbracio to introduce a trained denoising neural network. A person skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the known elements as described above and achieve the predictable result of automatically removing the noise from input images. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine the analogous arts Shinoda and Delbracio to obtain the invention in claim 1.
Regarding claim 4, Shinoda in view of Delbracio teaches, The image noise reduction method according to claim 1, wherein the artificial noise follows a statistical distribution. (Shinoda, ¶0067: “the noise 123b of the identification success image 3 is similarly generated with a normal distribution”).
Regarding claim 6, Shinoda in view of Delbracio teaches, The image noise reduction method according to claim 4, wherein the artificial noise follows a normal distribution or a lognormal distribution. (Shinoda, ¶0067: “the noise 123b of the identification success image 3 is similarly generated with a normal distribution”).
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinoda et al. (US 2020/0134355 A1) in view of Delbracio et al. (US 2024/0013350 A1) and in further view of Miyairi et al. (US 2003/0219935 A1).
Regarding claim 2, Shinoda in view of Delbracio teaches, The image noise reduction method according to claim 1, wherein the anisotropic filter has parameters (Delbracio, ¶0037: “an anisotropic Gaussian function, specified with three parameters”). However, the combination of Shinoda and Delbracio does not explicitly teach, including at least a scanning rate and a scanning direction of the electron beam and a response characteristic of an electron detector of the scanning electron microscope, and the parameters are set to coincide with parameters that are used when the image of the workpiece is generated.
In an analogous field of endeavor, Miyairi teaches, including at least a scanning rate and a scanning direction of the electron beam and a response characteristic of an electron detector of the scanning electron microscope, (Miyairi, ¶0046: “scanning an amorphous semiconductor film of 150 nm formed on a ground film having striped convex portions with a continuous-oscillation laser beam having an output energy of 6.5 W at a scanning rate of 50 cm/sec at an angle of 450 from the longitudinal direction of a convex portion”) and the parameters are set to coincide with parameters that are used when the image of the workpiece is generated. (Miyairi, ¶0035: “the direction vertical to the scanning direction of a continuous-oscillation laser beam when irradiating a 200-nm amorphous semiconductor film formed on an insulating film having concave and convex portions with the laser beam so that the scanning rate of the laser beam becomes 5 cm/sec”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shinoda in view of Delbracio using the teachings of Miyairi to introduce variable scan rate and scan direction. A person skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the known elements as described above and achieve the predictable result of optimized scanning of a semiconductor wafer. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine the analogous arts Shinoda, Delbracio and Miyairi to obtain the invention in claim 2.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinoda et al. (US 2020/0134355 A1) in view of Delbracio et al. (US 2024/0013350 A1) and in further view of Fukunaga et al. (US 2019/0017817 A1).
Regarding claim 3, Shinoda in view of Delbracio teaches, The image noise reduction method according to claim 1, wherein the anisotropic filter has parameters. However, the combination of Shinoda and Delbracio does not explicitly teach, including at least material and cross-sectional structure of a surface of the sample, and acceleration voltage and current of the electron beam, and the parameters are set to coincide with parameters that are used when the image of the workpiece is generated.
In an analogous field of endeavor, Fukunaga teaches, including at least material and cross-sectional structure of a surface of the sample, and acceleration voltage and current of the electron beam, (Fukunaga, ¶0028: “The scanning electron microscope illustrated in FIG. 11 is a device capable of applying a high voltage (for example, 15 kV or higher) to an acceleration electrode (not illustrated), and allowing the electron beam to reach a buried pattern or the like, which is not exposed onto the sample surface, by irradiation of the electron beam with a high acceleration”) and the parameters are set to coincide with parameters that are used when the image of the workpiece is generated. (Fukunaga, ¶0029: “The control device 1120 controls each configuration of the scanning electron microscope and also has a function of forming an image based on the detected electrons and a function of measuring a pattern width of a pattern formed on the sample”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shinoda in view of Delbracio using the teachings of Fukunaga to introduce adjustable parameters of operating the scanning electron microscope. A person skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the known elements as described above and achieve the predictable result of optimized scanning of a semiconductor wafer. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine the analogous arts Shinoda, Delbracio and Fukunaga to obtain the invention in claim 3.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinoda et al. (US 2020/0134355 A1) in view of Delbracio et al. (US 20240013350 A1) and in further view of Barbu et al. (US 9,591,240 B1).
Regarding claim 5, Shinoda in view of Delbracio teaches, The image noise reduction method according to claim 4. However, the combination of Shinoda and Delbracio does not explicitly teach, wherein the artificial noise is Poisson noise.
In an analogous field of endeavor, Barbu teaches, wherein the artificial noise is Poisson noise. (Barbu, col. 1, lines 44-46: “artificial noise (Gaussian, Poisson, salt and pepper, etc.), which is artificially added to a clean image to obtain a noisy version of the image”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shinoda in view of Delbracio using the teachings of Barbu to introduce adding artificial Poisson noise to an image. A person skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the known elements as described above and achieve the predictable result of accurately simulating real-world noise to evaluate the denoising model. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine the analogous arts Shinoda, Delbracio and Barbu to obtain the invention in claim 5.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MEHRAZUL ISLAM whose telephone number is (571)270-0489. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday: 8am-5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Saini Amandeep can be reached on (571) 272-3382. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MEHRAZUL ISLAM/Examiner, Art Unit 2662
/AMANDEEP SAINI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2662
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