US Patent Issued to HITACHI HIGH-TECH on June 17 for "Sample observation system and image processing method" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,333,695, issued on June 17, was assigned to HITACHI HIGH-TECH Corp. (Tokyo).

"Sample observation system and image processing method" was invented by Naoaki Kondo (Tokyo), Minoru Harada (Tokyo) and Yohei Minekawa (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The invention provides a sample observation system including a scanning electron microscope and a calculator. The calculator: (1) acquires a plurality of images captured by the scanning electron microscope; (2) acquires, from the plurality of images, a learning defect image including a defect portion and a learning reference image not including the defect portion; (3) calculates estimation pr...