UNIVERSAL SPATIAL PATTERN RECOGNITION SYSTEM

A method and apparatus for analyzing patterns in semiconductor wafers wherein the patterns are compared to a plurality of patterns stored in a common pattern library. A spatial pattern recognition engine is operable to receive a first set of data corresponding to a pattern on a semiconductor wafer and to generate a normalized contour representation of said first data set. A pattern analyzer compares the normalized data set to a plurality of reference contour data sets stored in a common pattern data reference library and generates a correlation label associating the first data set with one of the plurality of reference contour data sets. The label associated with the first data set is stored in a label storage database that can be accessed to perform subsequent analysis on the data associated with a specific wafer. The system can be used to analyze multiple types of patterns, including defect data, bin data, positional parameter data and in-line site data.