Optical method and apparatus for inspecting the front surface shape of plate shaped transparent objects

The present invention provides an inspection method and an inspection apparatus which can remove influence of rear surface reflection image and inspect characteristic of a front surface shape with good accuracy by an inexpensive apparatus construction. First of all, as a stripe pattern suitable for a transparent plate-shaped object 3 (object to be inspected), a stripe pattern 1 having a bright-dark pattern configured so that its reflection image produced by the front surface of the transparent plate-shaped object and its reflection image produced by a rear surface of the transparent plate-shaped object are separated in an image signal obtained by image-capturing, is determined. Thereafter, the reflection image of the stripe pattern 1 produced by the transparent plate-shaped object 3 is selected and the front surface shape of the transparent plate-shaped object 3 is evaluated by an image analysis using the selected reflection image.