Patent ID: 7616803

Claim:
A surface inspection method for inspecting for defects on the surface of an article and judging whether the article is to be rejected, the surface being almost flat and continuous, and having a flat part and a non-flat part with convex shapes and concave shapes provided based on design data, the method comprising using a processor to perform the steps of: taking an image of the article surface; calculating non-flat part correction data for making the image of the non-flat part into one equivalent to the image of the flat part based on the difference between the image of the non-flat part and the image of the flat part; correcting the image of the non-flat part based on the non-flat part correction data; and detecting defects on the article surface by processing the image of the article surface after correcting the image of the non-flat part; wherein the non-flat part is determined based on the design data of the article surface, and wherein the non-flat part correction data is determined by the difference between an average of the image luminance of the non-flat part at plural points having a similar tilt angle and an average of the image luminance of the flat part at plural points.