Patent ID: 6980291

Claim:
A method of inspecting a curved shape, comprising: a step of irradiating a surface of an object to be inspected with light from a pattered light source; a step of picking up an image of the object to be inspected; a step of analyzing the image to extract a reflected image of the light source; a step of calculating the position of the reflected image of the light source; a step of calculating the height distribution of the surface of the object to be inspected based on the position of the reflected image of the light source; and a step of performing a good/defective judgment of the shape of the object to be inspected based on the result of comparing data regarding the extracted reflected image with data regarding the reflected image from a good product which is registered in advance, wherein the step of performing the good/defective judgment of the shape of the object to be inspected is based on the result of comparing reference height distribution data which is prepared in advance, with the calculated height distribution of the surface of the object to be inspected, and wherein the height distribution is a sum of the difference between adjacent reflected images along a predetermined axis direction.