Patent ID: 8547546

Claim:
A method of inspecting surface defects by illuminating an inspected object with illuminating light, detecting scattering light from the inspected object, and inspecting detects on a surface of the inspected object, said method comprising the steps of: forming defects having known coordinates on a standard sample; illuminating the standard sample with the illuminating light and detecting scattering light from the standard sample; correcting image coordinates of detected defects on the surface of the standard sample based on the known coordinates; and detecting at least one defect on the surface of the inspected object based on the corrected image coordinates, wherein the differences between image coordinates of the detected defects on the surface of the standard sample and the known coordinates are calculated, a decision is made as to whether each coordinate difference is greater than a given value, and in a case where the coordinate difference is greater than the given value, a mechanism of detecting the scattering light is adjusted and in a case where the coordinate difference is equal to or less than the given value, the image coordinates of the detected defects are corrected based on the coordinate difference and the defects on the surface of the inspected object are inspected based on the corrected image coordinates.