Patent ID: 6936835

Claim:
An apparatus for inspecting particles and/or pattern defects of en object under inspection, the apparatus comprising: illuminating means for irradiating the object under inspection with light; light detecting means for detecting reflected light and scattered light from the object under inspection caused by irradiation of the light by said illuminating means; detecting means for processing signals obtained by detection of the reflected light and the scattered light by said light detecting means to detect particles and/or pattern defects; data processing means for obtaining sizes of the particles and/or the pattern defects and occurrence frequencies of said sizes, based on information on the particles end/or the pattern defects detected by said detecting means; outputting means for outputting information on said sizes and said occurrence frequencies for each size of the particles and/or the pattern defects obtained by said data processing means; and display means for displaying the information from said outputting means, wherein, when a signal outputted from said detecting means is saturated, said data processing means calculates a peak level of said signal using an assumption that said signal is not saturated.