Since the atomic vibration is strongly correlated among neighbor atoms or within very short-range in crystal, the short-range coherency in electron diffraction may survive even if the long-range coherency is destroyed by thermal vibration. The short-range coherency causes broad structures in the thermal diffuse scattering (TDS). The broad diffraction structures due to short range coherency were indeed observed for a Si(001) surface when medium energy electron diffraction was measured at medium scattering angles.@footnote 1@ The broad features were observed as very simple oscillations of diffracted electron intensity. These features have been termed correlated thermal diffuse scattering (CTDS).@footnote 1@ Since CTDS is well interpreted as kinematical diffraction among nearest neighbor atoms composing the crystal, the three-dimensional Patterson function can be obtained by simple Fourier transformation of a three-dimensional CTDS pattern. When a medium electron beam is incident at a grazing angle, the surface sensitivity of CTDS is enhanced, and the building blocks of surfaces, i.e. the lengths and the orientations of all the surface related nearest-neighbor bonds, can be directly obtained from the Patterson function analysis. The application of Patterson function analysis of CTDS will be demonstrated for the surface structures of Si(001)2x1,@footnote 2@ Si(111)@sr@3x@sr@3-In@footnote 3@ and Si(111)4x1-In. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ T. Abukawa, C.M. Wei, T. Hanano, and S. Kono, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 335 (1999). @footnote 2@ T. Abukawa, C.M. Wei, K. Yoshimura and S. Kono, Phys. Rev. B62, 16069 (2000). @footnote 3@ T. Abukawa, K. Yoshimura and S. Kono, Surf. Rev. Lett.7, 547 (2000).