A method and apparatus is provided for automatically classifying a defect on
the
surface of a semiconductor wafer into one of a predetermined number of core classes
using a core classifier employing boundary and topographical information. The defect
is then further classified into a subclass of arbitrarily defined defects defined
by the user with a specific adaptive classifier associated with the one core class
and trained to classify defects only from a limited number of related core classes.
Defects that cannot be classified by the core classifier or the specific adaptive
classifiers are classified by a full classifier.
